The White House compared a taxpayer-funded television ad featuring President Donald Trump to historic public service announcements on health and wartime, and branded Democratic attacks on it highly dishonest.
On Friday the White House pushed back hard against critics of a new government-tagged TV spot about President Donald Trump, saying the ad belongs in the same category as past public service announcements on healthcare, drugs, and wartime efforts rather than as a campaign commercial.
The ad, first spotted Wednesday on Fox News during Jesse Watters’ show and also posted on the White House website and YouTube channel, uses the song “Love Me,” shows images and clips of the president with the American flag, includes anti-Communist messages and references to tax cuts, and carries the tag “paid for by the U.S. government.”
Newsweek reported that a White House press release framed the criticism as “highly dishonest” and cast the announcements as a reminder for Americans to love their country and know why it is worth defending.
In its Friday release, the White House drew a bright line between the spot and electioneering.
“The announcements are very clearly not campaign ads; President Donald Trump is not on the ballot and there is no call to action,” the press release stated.
“Instead, the announcements are a reminder for Americans to love their country and know why it’s worth defending, at home, at the border, and abroad. That’s not partisanship, that’s a government that still believes in the country it serves.”
Officials also argued that when earlier administrations used the airwaves, the work was labeled “public education,” but when the current administration does the same, critics brand it “propaganda.”
The White House stacked the record with examples from both parties.
During World War I, Woodrow Wilson’s administration used posters, films, and speakers to rally the country, including the famous “Uncle Sam Wants You” imagery noted by the National WWI Museum and Memorial. In World War II, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s U.S. Office of War Information put out films, radio messages, and posters about the war effort. Elmer Davis, who led that office, once observed that the easiest way to inject a propaganda idea into most people’s minds is to let it go through an entertainment picture when they do not realize they are being propagandized.
More recent presidents followed the same path. George W. Bush’s administration ran Super Bowl anti-drug and anti-terrorism PSAs in 2002, later used anti-drug YouTube ads, and aired television campaigns on the 2003 Medicare prescription drug law. When those Medicare ads drew scrutiny, the Government Accountability Office concluded the campaign was not a purely partisan message and did not break the law.
Barack Obama’s administration promoted Obamacare subsidies in 2016 by mail, television, and social media. The Environmental Protection Agency in 2015 ran a social media push on climate rules that was not treated as illegal at the time. Joe Biden’s 2021 “We Can Do This” COVID-19 vaccine campaign put TV ads on the air encouraging vaccination ahead of a Fourth of July return to normal life, involved 275 organizations, and drew on a $250 million contract signed during the first Trump administration that helped pay for the campaign’s development.
In each case, the federal government spent public money to explain policy and make a case for the country’s direction. The White House says this ad fits that tradition.
Democrats rejected the comparison at once.
On Thursday, Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland posted on X that the video “may be felony criminal theft and conversion of government property for political campaign purposes,” citing 18 U.S.C. § 1641, a federal statute dealing with theft and conversion of government property. He also called it a Hatch Act violation for any government employees who worked on it or used government resources, and said it was unethical under federal ethics rules that bar the use of government resources for political campaigns.
On Friday, Raskin told MS NOW there was nothing he could do to stop the ad from airing. On Saturday his office emailed a longer statement to Newsweek.
Raskin’s office argued a real public service announcement educates and informs, offering a measles outbreak notice in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, as the model. It then said the Trump spot does neither.
“Paid for by we the taxpayers, President Trump’s desperate ‘love me’ ad does not educate or inform anyone about anything. It is just the kind of nauseating government propaganda you would expect from an authoritarian state, like Putin’s Russia or Xi’s China.”
The same statement claimed the commercial, sent out five weeks before the midterm election, violates laws banning the use of government personnel and resources for campaign purposes, the Hatch Act, and basic ethics rules. It further alleged officials spent “hundreds of thousands or millions of taxpayer dollars” to put the ad on Fox News in what it called an effort to hang on to a shrinking base. Those dollar figures are Raskin’s claim; the reporting did not independently quantify the cost.
Democratic National Committee Deputy Communications Director Kendall Witmer struck a similar tone, telling Newsweek that Trump wants taxpayers to foot the bill for campaign ads promoting what she called a failed agenda, and that Americans are “sick of coughing up the funds for Trump’s bulls*** while he turns his back on them.”
Constitutional law professor Jessica Levinson of Loyola Law School told Newsweek the White House response itself undercuts the claim that the spot is merely informational.
“I think the White House's response to the reaction to the ad actually undermines his argument that this is merely an informational ad.”
Levinson added that each modern example the administration cites involved a specific healthcare or medical program, and that here there is no similar program or initiative Trump is trying to draw attention to.
Whether anyone will take the dispute to the Government Accountability Office, as happened with the Bush Medicare ads, remains to be seen. No such challenge is reported as filed.
The ad arrives alongside a broader White House effort to control its own message. Officials launched a 24/7 video channel branded “Trump TV: The Essentials Station” after the president barred CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House over what he called “fake news.” The “Love Me” spot is available on that ecosystem as well as on traditional cable.
Strip away the heat and the facts are straightforward. A government-tagged ad about the president’s record aired on Fox and on official channels. Democrats call it illegal campaign propaganda timed to the midterms. The White House calls it a non-partisan reminder that America is worth defending at home, at the border, and abroad, and points to a century of presidents who used the same tools.
Taxpayers have paid for government messaging under Wilson, Roosevelt, Bush, Obama, and Biden. The sudden outrage now says more about the critics than about the ad.
