GOP Senator Condemns White House Taxpayer-Funded Trump Campaign Ads

As the White House broadens a taxpayer-funded advertising effort to advance Donald Trump’s political agenda ahead of the November midterm elections, Republican Senator John Kennedy told CBS News on Sunday that there ought to be a rule against such spending—even as he tacitly acknowledged the practice is likely illegal.

Kennedy, a fellow Republican, was questioned by Margaret Brennan, host of CBS’s Face the Nation, about White House expenditure on multiple ads featuring Trump—including one originally produced for his 2024 campaign.

Brennan reminded Kennedy that in March he had criticized Kristi Noem, then Trump’s homeland security secretary, for spending millions in government funds to bolster her public image through a $220 million ad series. She then asked the Louisiana senator to weigh in on the new Trump ads, which the White House describes as public service announcements.

“Our viewers are going to see a 30-second commercial during this program,” Brennan said. “It airs on all major networks and cable channels. It prominently features President Trump, with a voice praising him as ‘the toughest, most resilient person I ever met’. At the end, it states ‘paid for by the US government’. Is this the best use of taxpayer money?”

Kennedy replied: “Well, first, regarding Secretary Noem, what she did was masterclass dumb. She spent $220 million on commercials about herself, and I called her out for it.”

“This looks like a commercial about President Trump,” Brennan noted, referring to the first ad in the series—a 30-second highlight reel of Trump’s second presidency punctuated by on-screen text promoting his political agenda and suggesting Democrats are communists.

“I don’t think any public official, including President Trump, Kristi Noem, or John Kennedy, should spend public money on private ads for themselves,” Kennedy replied. “Now, the White House sees it differently. But I think there ought to be a rule—you probably know there is a rule—against spending public money to promote yourself.”

Kennedy, a lawyer with degrees from the University of Virginia and the University of Oxford, appeared to be tacitly acknowledging the argument made by Democratic Congressman and legal scholar Jamie Raskin: that government employees who worked on the first pro-Trump ad—or used government resources to produce it—may have committed a felony violation of the Hatch Act, which bars government workers from partisan campaign activities.

According to Medium Buying, a firm that purchases airtime for Republican candidates, the Trump administration used additional taxpayer funds to broadcast another partisan ad featuring the president. The ad aired nationwide on Saturday during a college football game between Ohio State and Illinois on Fox, and again during Fox News Sunday.

That 30-second spot shows a moody black-and-white shot of Trump staring into the camera while the soundtrack plays the closing riff of a campaign speech he delivered dozens of times in 2023 and 2024.

“This is the final battle,” Trump says in the ad. “With you at my side, we will demolish the deep state; we will expel the warmongers from our government; we will drive out the globalists; we will cast out the communists, Marxists and fascists,” he continues, as a crowd cheers. The cheers suggest the audio was recorded during a campaign rally, before Trump used his presidential power to start a war with Iran—a move that left some supporters feeling betrayed.

“We will rout the fake news media, and we will liberate our country from these tyrants and villains once and for all,” Trump promises in language clearly calculated to appeal to Christian supporters by echoing the biblical story of Jesus driving merchants and money changers from the temple in Jerusalem.

The newest ad, bearing on-screen text reading “Paid for by the US Government”, is even more obviously a partisan product than the first. In fact, the ad was created for Trump’s 2024 election campaign and was posted on his Truth Social account in 2023 and 2024 with a plea for supporter funds.

The rhetoric was written into Trump’s standard campaign speech as early as July 2023 and repeated at dozens of rallies and fundraising appeals thereafter.

The ad was even played on giant screens during the 2024 Republican National Convention before Trump’s speech accepting his party’s nomination. When broadcast during the convention by C-SPAN on 18 July 2024, the ad was identified as material provided by the Republican National Committee.

At the end of his CBS interview on Sunday, Kennedy volunteered that he also opposed Trump’s effort to put his name on public buildings.

“I also think we ought to have a rule that no politician can have a building named after him while alive,” Kennedy said, adding that such a statute exists in his home state.

“Well, we’ll watch, Senator, if you introduce that,” Brennan responded.

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