Taxpayers who are furious at funding mid-term campaign ads puffing up President Donald Trump can continue to get mad, said CNN. New information reaching CNN reveals the Trump administration has created at least 13 of the campaign-style ads as part of its controversial taxpayer-funded, multi-million-dollar effort to promote the swaggering president.
“CNN has obtained clips of 12 ads, which range from 15 seconds to three minutes long, including two that have already aired,” reports CNN’s Betsy Klein. “They appear in a Dropbox account — which was shared with CNN — run by LMD, the agency that has been given the government contract for the ad buys. Each ends with ‘Paid for by the U.S. Government’ at the bottom of the screen. Another ad that is not in the Dropbox account, ‘Final Battle,’ has also aired in recent weeks.”
Yet-to-be-aired spots include a trio of ads highlighting Trump’s military and operations in Iran and Venezuela. One of the ads is called “God Made Trump” and another recaps the UFC fight Trump hosted at the White House.
Trump’s national ad buy featuring himself immediately drew critics over laws against using taxpayer money to fund political advertising. Government sources even tell NBC News that Trump did not even alert administrators that their budgets would be footing the bill.
“They didn’t sign off on it,” an official said of CBP leaders. “They were thinking, ‘There’s no way they’re going to try to take the funding from CBP for those ads.’”
The campaign has raised serious concerns among Democrats and Republicans — and even his own advisers, with several describing the initiative as potentially illegal and actively distancing themselves from it, according to a recent report.
Zeteo revealed that Trump’s allies and administration officials involved in discussions about the ads have described them as “obviously illegal,” as one senior Trump official put it. Another source close to the White House said they were approached for a role in the project but declined due to legal concerns. “It did not sound legal at all,” the individual stated.
While each of the upcoming ads has a different theme, CNN reports “many of them include imagery of the president and audio with positive reviews from news reports, which is likely to intensify criticism that the campaign is using taxpayer dollars to help Trump personally.”
They’re also chock full of patriotic images, including the cap toss at a military graduation, fireworks over Mount Rushmore and military flyovers.