White House airs another government-funded ad, this time with Trump warning of ‘final battle’
The White House is seen on March 9
By Aileen Graef, CNN
(CNN) — The White House has launched another taxpayer-funded television ad before the midterms, this time featuring imagery of President Donald Trump walking down a hall as audio plays of him saying “this is the final battle.”
“We will cast out the communists, Marxists, and fascists. We will throw off the sick political class that hates our country. We will rout the fake news media, and we will liberate America from these villains once and for all,” Trump says in the ad, echoing comments he made during a Veterans Day speech in 2023.
The ad aired during at least two NFL games on Sunday, during Fox’s broadcasts of the Washington Commanders-Seattle Seahawks matchup as well as the Carolina Panthers-Cleveland Browns game.
The Trump administration has drawn widespread attention for its airing of ads featuring the president just over a month before the November midterms. The White House has compared the ads to previous administrations running public service announcements about Medicare, Obamacare and promoting Covid-19 vaccination, saying in a statement that its new commercials “are very clearly not campaign ads.”
The latest ad appears nearly identical to the majority of a video Trump posted on Truth Social in January 2024, during his third presidential campaign. The video on Truth Social has an additional six seconds that includes Trump’s campaign logo and a number to text, while “Paid for by the US Government” is seen across the screen at the end of the White House-funded ad.
This is the third government-funded ad to be captured in recent days by the media tracker AdImpact. An ad that began airing Wednesday featured rapidly edited pictures and video of Trump over audio of him denouncing communism and socialism, with text on the screen that touts his administration’s accomplishments, such as “reigniting American manufacturing.”
A second ad features video of Trump at Mount Rushmore as his voice is heard saying, “Never before has any nation celebrated so magnificent a triumph as this one.”
The White House declined to elaborate on how the first ad was being funded but defended it as part of “public service announcements” to promote national pride.
“The ad is educational and unapologetically patriotic,” a White House spokesperson said in a statement. “We should be proud of our country.”
That ad drew scrutiny from the government watchdog group Common Cause, which suggested it could violate rules against using taxpayer dollars for “propaganda.”
“I don’t think you have to be a legal scholar and wonder why the president has to use taxpayer funds to promote his image” this close to an election, Carol Evans, the vice president for policy at Common Cause, told CNN.
The-CNN-Wire
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