President Trump is halting a taxpayer-funded ad campaign that he says promotes the country and will pay for the ads through the MAGA Inc. super PAC, but Democrats say the move is still illegal.
Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer said Tuesday he will report Mr. Trump to the Federal Election Commission for illegally coordinating with the super PAC.
“Trump has gutted funding for health care and other essential programs but he nonetheless found millions of dollars — taxpayer dollars — to pay for political ads,” the New York Democrat said in a statement. “This is illegal, corrupt, and undemocratic — and now he’s following with another illegal act by directing his Super PAC to pick up the tab for his propaganda.”
People were interested in these podcasts
Because Super PACs can raise funds without contribution limits, they are barred from coordinating with candidates on spending decisions such as ad buys.
Candidates often use subtle signals on the messaging they want allied super PACs to use to get around the FEC rules.
Mr. Trump, however, was direct in a social media post Monday night, saying he planned to switch the source of the funding for the recent ads he has been running, which have cost at least $1.5 million in federal funding. The spots tout the state of the country under his leadership and warn against socialists taking control.
“The Radical Left is upset with the fact that I am taking Ads, which I consider to be a positive promotion for our Great U.S.A., and paying for them with U.S.A. money,” the president said. “This is a rather standard thing to do but, rather than doing that, although nothing will make them happy, I have decided to do the Patriotic Ads, among others, and pay for them myself, and with money I raised for MAGA, Inc.”
The Washington Times reached out to the White House for comment on Mr. Schumer reporting Mr. Trump to the FEC for illegal coordination with the super PAC.
Mr. Schumer also sent a letter Tuesday to the heads of the Government Accountability Office and the Office of Special Counsel asking they investigate the Trump administration’s initial use of taxpayer funding for the perceived political ads.
“They are political hype videos: images of President Trump set to emotionally loaded music, rhetoric about defeating ‘communism, socialism, and Marxism,’ and recycled campaign-style attacks on the ‘deep state,’ ‘globalists,’ and the ‘fake news media.’ One spot reportedly repurposes material from Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign,” Mr. Schumer wrote.
He said the White House’s claims that the ads are not political because they do not promote a candidate and Mr. Trump is not running this year fall apart, as the president has repeatedly told his supporters to pretend he is on the ballot.
“Taxpayer dollars cannot be used to turn that political instruction into a federally funded campaign ad,” Mr. Schumer said. “There is a basic principle at stake: the government is not the President’s campaign committee, and the Treasury is not his campaign account.”
The ads tout Republican talking points such as tax cuts, crime prevention, defeating communism and cracking down on illegal immigration, but focus squarely on Mr. Trump.
Mr. Schumer’s letter asks the GAO, a nonpartisan watchdog agency that reports to Congress, to determine the sources of taxpayer funding used and whether the ads fall under the allowable uses Congress authorized for those accounts.
Democratic appropriators have said the ads were paid for with funds Republicans allocated to U.S. Customs and Border Protection in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Mr. Schumer is asking the Office of Special Counsel, an independent investigative and prosecutorial agency, to examine whether federal employees involved in the ad campaign illegally used their government positions and resources for political activity.
Contact the author
Please read our comment policy before commenting.