Trump personally helped orchestrate taxpayer-funded ads promoting himself and his policies, source says

President Donald Trump has personally driven the controversial, tax-payer funded video ads promoting himself and his administration’s policies, including helping select the imagery and videos used, a source familiar with the matter told CNN.

Two Trump advisers familiar with the ads said that they were being created in-house by the White House video team — which is part of the communications team, responsible for the administration’s public messaging.

Coming just over a month before the November midterms, the ads have generated bi-partisan criticism over how the Trump administration is spending taxpayer dollars.

“It’s a great message. I like the message, but it shouldn’t be paid for with taxpayer dollars,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters in the Capitol Monday.

GOP Sen. John Cornyn of Texas on whether taxpayers should fund the messages, said: “It’s not even a close question.”

CNN has reached out to the White House for comment. The White House has broadly defended the ads, saying they are akin to public service announcements in past administrations about Medicare, Obamacare and Covid-19 vaccinations and insisting they “are very clearly not campaign ads.”

But the imagery is undeniably meant to promote Trump, casting him as a warrior battling against existential threats. And the latest one appears nearly identical to the majority of a video Trump posted on Truth Social in January 2024, during his third presidential campaign.

That most recent ad shows Trump walking down a hall as audio plays of him saying “this is the final battle.”

“We will cast out the communist, 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 video on Truth Social has an additional six seconds that includes Trump’s campaign logo and a number to text. The text “Paid for by the US Government” is seen across the screen at the end of the ad.

Multiple members of Trump’s political operation said they were unaware that these ads were coming until they aired. But another source pushed back on the notion that anyone was kept in the dark— noting that the president had spoken about the ads to multiple aides and advisers, and insisting that they were not being made in secret.

The latest ad — which 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 — is the third government-funded message in recent days to be captured 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. Text on the screen touted his administration’s accomplishments, including “reigniting American manufacturing.”

“The ad is educational and unapologetically patriotic,” a White House spokesperson said in a statement. “We should be proud of our country.”

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.”

Democrat Congressman Jamie Raskin, the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, said the ads “may be felony criminal theft and conversion of government property for political campaign purposes,” in a post on X.

And Raskin, who will gain congressional subpoena power in November if Democrats win the House, said it is not just Trump who might face inquiry over the messages. He said the creation of the ads was a “Hatch Act violation for any government employees who worked on it or used government resources to make it.”

“This is dumb, dumb, dumb beyond belief,” one former Trump campaign official told CNN. “These guys are all gonna get subpoenaed. It’s gonna be bad.”

CNN’s Betsy Klein contributed to this report.

一位知情人士告诉 CNN，唐纳德·特朗普总统亲自推动了备受争议的、由纳税人资助的视频广告的制作，这些广告旨在宣传他本人及其政府的政策，包括帮助选择使用的图像和视频。

两名熟悉这些广告的特朗普顾问表示，这些广告是由白宫视频团队内部制作的——该团队隶属于负责政府公共信息的通讯团队。

距离 11 月中期选举仅剩一个多月，这些广告引发了两党对特朗普政府如何使用纳税人资金的批评。

“这是一个很好的信息。我喜欢这个信息，但这不应该用纳税人的钱来支付，”参议院多数党领袖约翰·图恩周一在国会大厦告诉记者。

德克萨斯州共和党参议员约翰·科宁在被问及纳税人是否应该为这些信息提供资金时表示：“这根本就不是一个有争议的问题。”

CNN已联系白宫寻求置评。白宫为这些广告进行了广泛的辩护，称其类似于以往政府关于医疗保险、奥巴马医改和新冠疫苗接种的公益广告，并坚称这些广告“显然不是竞选广告”。

但这些画面无疑意在宣传特朗普，将他塑造成一位对抗生存威胁的战士。而最新的这幅画面几乎与特朗普在2024年1月第三次总统竞选期间发布在Truth Social上的一段视频的大部分内容如出一辙。

最新发布的广告中，特朗普走过一条走廊，同时播放着他的音频，他说“这是最后的战斗”。

“我们将驱逐共产主义者、马克思主义者和法西斯分子。我们将赶走仇恨我们国家的病态政治阶层。我们将铲除假新闻媒体，我们将一劳永逸地把美国从这些恶棍手中解放出来，”特朗普在广告中说道，这与他在2023年退伍军人节演讲中的言论遥相呼应。

Truth Social 上的这段视频比普通版多了六秒钟，其中包含了特朗普的竞选标志和一个短信发送号码。广告结尾屏幕上会出现“由美国政府付费”的字样。

特朗普竞选团队的多位成员表示，他们直到这些广告播出才知道此事。但另一位消息人士反驳了有人被蒙在鼓里的说法，指出总统曾与多位助手和顾问谈及这些广告，并坚称这些广告并非秘密制作。

最新的广告——在周日至少两场 NFL 比赛期间播出，分别是福克斯电视台转播的华盛顿指挥官队对阵西雅图海鹰队的比赛以及卡罗莱纳黑豹队对阵克利夫兰布朗队的比赛——是媒体追踪器 AdImpact 近日捕捉到的第三条政府资助的广告信息。

周三开始播出的一则广告快速剪辑了特朗普的图片和视频，配以他谴责共产主义和社会主义的音频。屏幕上的文字吹捧了他的政府成就，包括“重振美国制造业”。

白宫发言人在一份声明中表示：“这则广告既有教育意义，又毫不掩饰地表达了爱国情怀。我们应该为我们的国家感到自豪。”

第二则广告播放了特朗普在拉什莫尔山的视频，视频中可以听到他的声音说：“从来没有哪个国家庆祝过如此辉煌的胜利。”

众议院司法委员会资深成员、民主党众议员杰米·拉斯金在 X 网站上发帖称，这些广告“可能构成重罪，即为政治竞选目的而盗窃和侵占政府财产”。

如果民主党在11月赢得众议院，拉斯金将获得国会传唤权。他表示，可能面临调查的不仅仅是特朗普。他还说，任何参与制作或使用政府资源制作这些广告的政府雇员都违反了《哈奇法案》。

一位前特朗普竞选官员告诉CNN：“这简直愚蠢至极，愚蠢至极，愚蠢得难以置信。这些人都会被传唤。情况会很糟糕。”

CNN的贝齐·克莱因对本报道亦有贡献。