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Have you seen this?
It’s one in a slew of pro-Trump ads that has been airing since last Wednesday. Set to the song “Love Me” by the singer-songwriter JMSN, the roughly 30-second spot shows a rapid progression of pictures and video of President Trump, as he touts his accomplishments and denounces “communism, socialism and Marxism.” As it ends, you are informed that it was “Paid for by the U.S. Government.”
Trump is deeply unpopular and running strange, propagandistic advertisements is not likely to change that fact. But the wisdom of the campaign notwithstanding, the real problem with this is more legal than political. It is against the law to use taxpayer dollars for propaganda and explicitly partisan purposes.
“This may be felony criminal theft and conversion of government property for political campaign purposes,” Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, a Democrat, wrote on social media. “It is a Hatch Act violation for any government employees who worked on it or used government resources to make it. It is blatantly unethical under numerous federal ethics provisions proscribing the use of government resources for political campaigns.”
In a news release, The White House wrote that the ad is a public service announcement, “a reminder for Americans to love their country and know why it’s worth defending — at home, at the border, and abroad.” For his part, President Trump — who personally directed the chief of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, to use taxpayer funds for the ad campaign — says “these are ads for the country.” “I’m not promoting a candidate,” he added. “I’m not promoting myself because I’m not running for office. I’m promoting the country.”
But unlike a public service announcement, this ad — and others like it — aren’t promoting a government program or service. They exist to glorify President Trump: to love him, as the song suggests.
Richard Painter, a former White House ethics lawyer who served under President George W. Bush, gave The Associated Press a blunt assessment of the advertising campaign. “You watch all three ads, they’re sheer propaganda,” he said, adding that “This is increasingly looking like what authoritarian governments do to promote their leaders.”
Compared with the money used to build the president’s ballroom, this is not an expensive campaign. So far, the White House has spent about $5.5 million of a $20 million contract to produce and promote its pro-Trump propaganda. But again, it is less the cost than the fact that the president is showing his deep contempt for a fundamental norm of American democracy: We don’t use government to glorify our political leaders, at least not while they’re alive.
If future Americans want to vote to memorialize or otherwise praise past leaders, that is up to them. But it is not the place of the president to issue propaganda on his behalf, with money taken from the public till.
It is not clear that Democrats have the appetite to impeach Trump for a third time. Even if they did, there is almost no chance that they would have the votes to convict and remove him from office. And yet, this is exactly the type of offense that demands a response from the legislature. A president that shows this much contempt for the republican character of the American system — who seeks, at every opportunity, to set himself up as a strongman over the entire nation — is a president who must be sanctioned by the people’s representatives.
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Joseph Rushmore for The New York Times
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