12 moves that illustrate the brazenness of Trump’s second term — like those taxpayer-funded ads

When the Trump administration began running taxpayer-funded “public service announcements” that looked suspiciously like campaign ads for President Donald Trump last week, the White House gamely maintained they were “ very clearly not campaign ads .”

Then it gave up all pretense.

As of Sunday, the administration was running a new ad that was basically an actual campaign ad , repurposed from Trump’s 2024 bid . It effectively just slapped on a “Paid for by the U.S. Government” disclaimer and called it a day.

Even some Republicans aren’t bothering to try to spin for the White House on this one.

“You can’t spend public money to promote yourself,” Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana said Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

Indeed, there’s really no convincing defense for this. The purpose of the ads is clear. The White House’s comparisons to past public service announcements on issues like Covid-19 are ridiculous.

At the same time, even if the White House spends a few million dollars on these ads, are they really going to move the needle in the 2026 midterms — especially given the billions that will be spent overall? Perhaps not. So one could argue that it’s not worth getting too exercised over.

But the ad is merely the latest in a long series of such provocations from Trump.

While episodes like Trump’s mass pardons of January 6 defendants, his efforts to pay them out of an “anti-weaponization” fund and his proposal to pay every US citizen adult $5,000 if Republicans hold the House and Senate this November were brazen acts that got lots of attention, Trump has peppered the last two years with less sensational but no less brazen acts.

Call them microaggressions against our body politic. And given the constant deluge of news these days, much of the public probably forgot about them, if they even noticed in real time.

But as voters prepare to render their judgment on the first two years of Trump’s second term, it’s worth recalling some of the big examples.

The main problem here is that it’s setting a precedent in which the party in power can effectively use taxpayer money to support their own campaign to hold on to power. It might never take off as a practice, but it’s yet another striking example of the administration bulldozing the line between government business and Trump’s politics.

The White House greeted the fifth anniversary of the Capitol attack by launching a government website that echoed baseless conspiracy theories that the demonstrators that day were “peaceful protesters” who were provoked by law enforcement .

While it’s not unheard-of to provide such data feeds, known as APIs, this takes on a whole new valence when the feed is of Trump posts that are effectively press releases from the federal government — many of which have clear and demonstrable effects on the markets. The firms are basically being allowed to pay Trump’s business to get a leg up on everyone else with their investment decisions. And Truth Social even promoted the idea accordingly, citing Trump’s “most market-moving Truths.”

When the president’s hand-picked Kennedy Center board first tried this last year, Trump professed to being “surprised.” Now he’s openly holding the center hostage to try to secure that same goal.

The White House installed plaques along Trump’s “Presidential Walk of Fame” that feature Trump’s juvenile and conspiratorial taunts of some of his predecessors. They include Joe Biden being represented by a photo of an autopen , an allusion to Barack Obama’s “highly ineffective ‘Unaffordable’ Care Act,” and stating on Bill Clinton’s: “In 2016, President Clinton’s wife, Hillary, lost the Presidency to President Donald J. Trump!”

Before the president tried to secure the anti-weaponization fund through a dubious settlement between himself and the government he controls, Trump tried to go much further: He demanded that his own Justice Department pay him $230 million to compensate him for the federal investigations into his actions. (Even aside from the appearance of making his own government pay him, Trump was not acquitted of any crimes.)

Trump back in an April 2025 proclamation explicitly ordered federal investigations of two his political foes . It was a low-profile early signal that he would trample all over the norm that says presidents don’t try to sic the Justice Department on their enemies.

On one Friday night, Trump fired the independent watchdogs that oversaw more than a dozen federal agencies — and had proved a bit of a nuisance to Trump in his first term. One of them had reportedly been investigating a business of Elon Musk , who was then a prominent part of the administration. A judge later ruled the firings were illegal because Congress wasn’t given sufficient notice, but declined to reinstate the inspectors general.

A CNN investigation in July reported that Trump used his social media feed to promote more than 20 companies just days after buying stock in them. That included sometimes announcing government action that would benefit those companies. Notably, those dollar sums don’t compare to the billions he’s made on cryptocurrency .

Trump in May 2025 hosted a black-tie dinner for more than 200 top holders of the president’s personal $TRUMP meme coin , with the top 25 getting a small VIP reception. While it’s normal to hold such events with campaign donors, these people were effectively putting money directly in Trump’s pockets — and being rewarded with access if they gave enough.

It’s been evident for a long time that the administration has been targeting the funding of blue states that didn’t vote for Trump. By July, it just came out and admitted it in court. It said it had canceled clean-energy grants “ based solely on the political identity of the grant recipient’s state ” — in other words, whether it “was in a Blue State or a non-Blue State.”

It’s not really news anymore, because Trump has done it so often (and it’s possible it’s just posturing). But his repeated threats to annihilate Iran and target its infrastructure like power plants, bridges, oil wells and water desalination plants are hugely provocative on the world stage, in that such actions might constitute war crimes . They also put the military in the awful position of having to decide whether it would carry out potentially illegal orders.

上周，当特朗普政府开始播放由纳税人资助的“公益广告”时，这些广告看起来很像唐纳德·特朗普总统的竞选广告，白宫则极力坚称它们“显然不是竞选广告”。

然后它放弃了所有伪装。

截至周日，政府正在投放一则新广告，这则广告实际上是一则竞选广告，是从特朗普2024年的竞选活动中重新剪辑而来。它只是简单地加上了“由美国政府付费”的免责声明，就草草了事。

甚至有些共和党人都懒得费心为白宫在这件事上做任何粉饰。

“你不能用公款来宣传自己，”路易斯安那州参议员约翰·肯尼迪周日在哥伦比亚广播公司（CBS）的“面对国家”节目中说道。

的确，对此根本没有任何令人信服的辩护理由。这些广告的目的很明确。白宫将这些广告与过去针对新冠疫情等问题的公益广告相提并论，简直荒谬至极。

与此同时，即便白宫在这些广告上花费几百万美元，它们真的能在2026年中期选举中产生影响吗？尤其考虑到届时整体的竞选支出将高达数十亿美元？或许未必。因此，有人可能会认为，对此过度担忧并不值得。

但这则广告只不过是特朗普一系列此类挑衅行为中的最新一起。

虽然像特朗普大规模赦免 1 月 6 日的被告、试图从“反武器化”基金中支付赔偿金以及提议如果共和党在今年 11 月保住众议院和参议院的控制权，就向每位美国成年公民支付 5000 美元这样的事件引起了广泛关注，但特朗普在过去两年里也做出了一些不那么耸人听闻但同样厚颜无耻的行为。

不妨称之为对我们政治体系的微侵犯。鉴于如今新闻铺天盖地，即便公众当时有所察觉，也可能早已遗忘。

但随着选民准备对特朗普第二个任期的前两年做出评判，回顾一些重要的例子是很有必要的。

主要问题在于，这开创了一个先例，即执政党可以有效地利用纳税人的钱来支持自己的竞选活动，以保住权力。这种做法或许永远不会普及，但这又是本届政府模糊政府事务与特朗普政治活动界限的一个显著例证。

在国会大厦袭击事件五周年之际，白宫推出了一项政府网站，该网站附和了毫无根据的阴谋论，称当天的示威者是“和平抗议者”，受到了执法部门的挑衅。

提供此类数据源（即API）并非闻所未闻，但当数据源是特朗普发布的帖子，而这些帖子实际上就是联邦政府的新闻稿时，情况就完全不同了——其中许多帖子对市场有着明显且可证实的影响。这些公司实际上是被允许向特朗普的商业机构付费，从而在投资决策上获得领先优势。Truth Social甚至还以此为由推广了这种做法，并引用了特朗普“最能左右市场的真相”。

去年，当总统亲自挑选的肯尼迪中心董事会首次尝试这样做时，特朗普声称感到“惊讶”。现在，他却公开挟持该中心，试图达到同样的目的。

白宫在特朗普的“总统名人堂”上安装了铭牌，上面记录着特朗普对一些前任总统幼稚而又阴谋论式的嘲讽。例如，乔·拜登的代表是一张自动签字笔的照片，暗指奥巴马“极其无效的‘平价医疗法案’”，而比尔·克林顿的铭牌上则写着：“2016年，克林顿总统的妻子希拉里输给了唐纳德·J·特朗普总统！”

在总统试图通过与他所掌控的政府达成一项可疑的和解协议来获取反武器化基金之前，特朗普曾试图走得更远：他要求自己的司法部支付他2.3亿美元，作为对其行为进行联邦调查的补偿。（即使撇开让他的政府向他支付赔偿金这一表面现象不谈，特朗普也并未被判无罪。）

早在2025年4月，特朗普就发布公告，明确下令对两名政治对手展开联邦调查。这低调地发出了一个信号，表明他将践踏总统不应动用司法部打击政敌的惯例。

在一个周五晚上，特朗普解雇了负责监督十几个联邦机构的独立监察员——这些监察员在他第一任期内曾给他带来一些麻烦。据报道，其中一位监察员当时正在调查埃隆·马斯克的一家公司，而马斯克当时是政府的重要成员。一位法官后来裁定，由于国会没有得到足够的通知，此次解雇是非法的，但拒绝恢复这些监察长的职务。

CNN 7 月份的一项调查报道称，特朗普在购买 20 多家公司的股票后几天内，就利用社交媒体平台为其做宣传。有时，他还会宣布政府将出台有利于这些公司的政策。值得注意的是，这些投资金额与他通过加密货币赚取的数十亿美元相比，简直是小巫见大巫。

2025年5月，特朗普为200多位持有他个人“$TRUMP”表情包代币的顶级人士举办了一场盛大的晚宴，其中前25名还获得了小型VIP招待会。虽然为竞选捐款人举办此类活动很常见，但这些人实际上是在直接把钱送进特朗普的口袋——而且如果他们捐款足够多，就能获得相应的奖励。

长期以来，很明显，本届政府一直在针对那些没有投票给特朗普的蓝州削减资金。到了7月份，政府终于在法庭上公开承认了这一点。政府表示，取消清洁能源拨款“完全基于拨款接受州的政治立场”——换句话说，就是该州“是蓝州还是非蓝州”。

这其实已经不算新闻了，因为特朗普已经屡次这么做了（而且也可能只是作秀）。但他反复威胁要摧毁伊朗，并攻击其基础设施，例如发电厂、桥梁、油井和海水淡化厂，这在国际舞台上极具挑衅性，因为这些行动可能构成战争罪。这也让军方陷入了进退两难的境地，不得不决定是否执行可能违法的命令。