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The Democratic party has announced they’re suing Donald Trump for his recent attempt to flood the midterm airwaves with propaganda he’s falsely claiming are “public service announcements.”
The DNC complaint was filed in federal court in Washington, and names the White House, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as defendants in what the party calls “a blatant violation of the statutory ban on the use of appropriations for ‘publicity or propaganda purposes.”
As we recently noted, Donald Trump decided to flood the midterm airwaves with agitprop, including a recycled black and white advertisement from the 2024 election cycle featuring the president walking down a hallway promising to smite his perceived enemies. Given Trump’s abysmal polling it’s more likely to hurt than help midterm Republicans, but Trump’s gargantuan ego couldn’t help itself.
There are a few different ads in the campaign. The catch: the $20 million advertisement campaign was funded by taxpayers. That violated not only Federal Appropriations Laws restricting taxpayer-funded propaganda, but also other potential laws like the Hatch Act and the The Anti-Deficiency Act.
From the Democrats’ lawsuit:
“The use of public funds also places the DNC and Democratic candidates at an electoral disadvantage, even though the publicly funded propaganda advertisements are deeply unpopular with American voters, by preserving funds held by campaign committees and PACs—including MAGA Inc.—for other political expenditures.”
To try and pretend they weren’t violating multiple laws, dutiful Trumplings like FCC boss Brendan Carr repeatedly lied and claimed these were just public-service announcements — despite the fact that PSA legal exemptions require some actual government service or program to be advertised. Vice President JD Vance also lied about this when interviewed by the press this week, going so far as to falsely claim the Trump propaganda spots “were not partisan:”
Trump subsequently made a post to his personal propaganda website, Truth Social, claiming (for whatever that’s worth) that he’ll stop using taxpayer dollars and instead fund the ads “himself” (leverage his existing SuperPAC cash trove):
Granted this being Trump, there’s been no indication anything changed about the ads or how they are being funded, and Trump can’t legally direct his SuperPAC how to spend its money anyway. Early indications are that even if he does follow through on the promise to stop using taxpayer dollars for propaganda, the Trump administration won’t be reimbursing taxpayers for the cost of the ads that have already aired.
Republicans enjoy a massive financial advantage over Democrats, and are throwing half-a-billion dollars at midterm ad spending with the help of top donor and white supremacist Elon Musk.
They’re also doing everything possible to ignore or eliminate traditional restrictions on how that money is spent, whether we’re talking about the Supreme Court and FCC working in concert to give dark money groups the ability to spend unlimited cash on steeply discounted broadcast TV ads, or Brendan Carr weakening robocall rules so they can bombard voters with AI-generated robocalls.
The great irony remains that Trump is increasingly so unpopular due to his empty promises, pointless wars, blatant corruption, and constant bumbling, that all the money in the world doesn’t seem to be providing any real tactical advantage. If anything, slathering the airwaves with Trump’s face seems more inclined to undermine Republicans in key House and Senate midterm races.
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