It is normal for presidents to make PSAs. Many have made them to inform the public to take the census, get health care, and get vaccinated. They have made them to get the public to act in response to national crises. Often, government agencies allocate funding to explain various programs and policies. Therefore, the Trump PSA ads require scrutiny. The issue is not that Trump is in the ads. It’s the use of taxpayer money to produce and air ads that focus on and promote Trump. It’s particularly troubling because one of the ads is based on Trump’s political campaign. That ad shows Trump crossing the line between using the power and resources of the presidency to promote his personal political interests. This shows Trump’s commitment to using any and all means to transform his personal interests with the power of the presidency.
Start with the ad itself
One of the ads now being purchased with federal money is known as the “Final Battle” ad.
You can watch it here:
The 30-second spot presents Trump describing a struggle against “globalists,” the political establishment, and other opponents. The government-funded version ends by disclosing that the U.S. Government paid for it.
What makes the ad particularly notable is that it was not originally created as neutral government information.
The Associated Press reported that the Trump administration began using taxpayer money to air a television advertisement from Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. Reuters similarly reported that the government-funded version is nearly identical to campaign material used during the 2024 election.
It is one of three government-funded Trump ads now airing nationally. Advertising-tracking firm AdImpact estimates that spending on the three is approaching $1.5 million.
The White House says the ads are public-service announcements intended to encourage patriotism. It notes that Trump is not on the ballot in this year’s midterm elections and that the advertisements do not tell viewers how to vote.
That defense deserves consideration because presidents have appeared in government communications before.
But appearance alone is not the issue.
What ordinary presidential public service looks like
Barack Obama personally appeared in multiple PSAs to talk about the Census and explain why the public should participate. He said participation would help fund programs in local communities. He told people to look for the census forms, fill them out, and return them. To boost the response rate, the Census Bureau published a PSA with Obama’s message for public broadcast. The Bureau also initiated a $133 million campaign to increase census response rates. Obama’s appearance in a PSA allowed the Bureau to have the President make a public appeal for participation at no cost. The Bureau’s advertising campaign also had a clear purpose: complying with the Constitution by requiring the Bureau to count U.S. citizens. The census also helped the Bureau determine response rates and adjust its workforce to locate unresponsive households. For the advertisements, Obama was the messenger, and the public was the primary audience.
That is the line worth watching
We can better analyze Trump ads with these questions. Is the line being crossed when the president is part of an official government communication? Presidents clearly appear in official communications. The real questions are: What communication resources are being used? What is the government purpose in the communication? Is the president, in fact, the communications official, or is the purpose of the communication to deliver the president’s message? Could the president’s re-election campaign have produced this communication? In the example, “Final Battle,” we don’t have to wonder. The answer is clearly yes. This example is uniquely different, as in other cases, we don’t know the answer to this last question.
Public office belongs to the public
Another way democratic norms can slowly erode is when the separation between the individual and the office they hold becomes blurred. While government employees are expected to work for and implement an administration’s policies, and the president is expected to promote and defend those policies, the concern arises when the government, through its employees, aids and abets a campaign effort. It’s clearly unlawful for a president to use government funds to make campaign advertisements and to buy advertising time for those ads. The law provides for a separation of functions. Although agencies of the government are authorized to make policy announcements, they may not make, issue, or disseminate advertisements for strictly partisan and political purposes. The Trump advertisements may cross the line, but whether the laws apply and whether the ads are indeed partisan and political is a matter of disagreement among legal scholars. Some also argue that the Trump ads are official, not partisan. While the public may eventually have to weigh in on the legality of the Trump ads in court, the evidence shows he has crossed the partisan and political line.
Look at what the public money is doing
The clearest signs are repetitive and cumulative.
The government is the sponsor.
The message makes a case about the president’s leadership and politics.
One of the ads nearly entirely duplicates an ad from the president’s campaign. Other ads, such as those for vaccination and census campaigns, or campaigns to enroll in government programs, have been run by the government. The government hasn’t reportedly run similar campaigns that required directly informing the public about a service. The White House says these ads promote patriotism. They cite other ad campaigns run by previous presidents and their administrations. However, even in those examples, the government could make a case for the service independently of the president. In these ads, Trump is the focal point. The ads essentially are Trump’s political attacks against his opponents. Without Trump and his politics, there is very little, if any, public service announcement (PSA) material.
What to look for next time
Truth be told, turning a public office into a personal power fiefdom will rarely resemble a bad tabloid Headline. More often it will show up as government contracts, employees, property, and funds. It will show up in government websites, events, and communications. It will appear as rules and procedures. All of these will raise the same concern. Are government resources and services organized to promote the public good and interest, or have they been diverted to serve the officeholder’s interests? When a government employee is also a political partisan and office holder, we must ask: is the employee doing this to promote the interest of the Government, or to advance his/her own interest? Would a staff member of this government office be engaged in this activity if the office holder was not also the leader of the political party? Would this Government Office be closed to the public if another officeholder were in charge?
Those questions aren’t really about Barack Obama or Donald Trump. They’re about how we can separate a public office from the person currently holding it. All offices get combined with their occupants to some extent. However, the presidency gets combined with its occupant the most. This is because the presidency has an enormous amount of power, influence, money, and other resources.
Public offices aren’t personally owned by the president. They are owned by the public. When we allow the president to use the office’s resources to combine his or her personality with the presidency’s resources, we allow the president to claim the presidency’s power as his or her own. The public owns the power of the presidency.
When the president uses the resources of the office to personally promote himself or herself instead of promoting the institutions that he or she is a part of, that personally owned power begins to steal the functions of a political campaign and political party, and the public begins to lose the power that should belong to them.
We must differentiate the resources of the office of the presidency from the personal resources of the president. They are not the same. No president personally owns the presidency.