Trump’s ads have cost taxpayers at least $2.5 million, with funding from Customs and Border Protection

Millions of taxpayer dollars have already been spent on President Donald Trump’s hagiographic ads, according to estimates by a leading political ad-tracking firm. And a total of $20 million has been allocated for the effort, which watchdog groups have deemed illegal.

The TV airtime for the three different Trump ads has cost at least $2.5 million to date, the ad-tracking firm AdImpact told CNN.

The actual cost of the taxpayer-funded ad campaign is even higher, but can’t be fully ascertained.

The money for these ads is coming from Customs and Border Protection, or CBP for short, two sources familiar with the matter told CNN.

Earlier this month, the White House Office of Management and Budget, led by Russell Vought, allocated $20 million to CBP for what it called “OBBBA commemorative events.” (OBBBA is an abbreviation for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which Trump signed into law in 2025.)

Shortly after the $20 million was allocated, CBP contracted an advertising company, LMD Agency Inc., for a national media account in the same dollar amount. Days later, the ads began to appear on national television, two additional sources told CNN. LMD’s parent company, MarCom Group, did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.

Kevin Carter/Getty Images/File

CBP is an agency within the Department of Homeland Security. On Tuesday, two Democratic senators, Patty Murray and Chris Murphy, sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin accusing the department of “a shockingly corrupt misuse of taxpayer dollars.”

The propagandistic ads also faced a fresh challenge from the government watchdog group Public Citizen on Tuesday.

The ads “appear to violate the federal law against using taxpayer funds to finance propaganda and related provisions of the appropriations laws as well as the Hatch Act,” Public Citizen co-presidents Robert Weissman and Lisa Gilbert and the group’s lobbyist, Craig Holman, wrote in a complaint to the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission.

It’s unclear whether any outside groups have the legal standing to sue the Trump administration over the ads.

And while lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have questioned their legality, Republicans — who currently control both the House and the Senate — have not acted.

AdImpact’s analysis for CNN found 2,766 total ad airings between September 23 and 29. The ads have aired on Fox News and the big four broadcast networks.

About 30% of the ad spend has been dedicated to NFL and college football games, according to the firm’s research.

The ads have also appeared during shows like ABC’s “The View,” CBS’s “Elsbeth” and NBC’s “The Weakest Link.”

Because the spots have been classified as a “public service announcement” rather than a traditional political ad buy, the exact spending is not publicly disclosed or verifiable. AdImpact’s estimates are based on air dates, times, local markets, and other factors.

The firm said the first Trump ad to air, featuring the song “Love Me” by JMSN, has aired on more than 1,300 occasions so far.

Lawyers for JMSN sent a cease-and-desist letter to the White House earlier this week, demanding that the administration no longer use the song.

The text “Paid for by the US Government” is seen on screen at the end of each of the three ads, including one repurposed version of an ad from Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign.

The “paid for” disclosure conflicts with the administration’s insistence that the ads are “public service announcements” akin to those that past administrations have aired about Medicare, Obamacare and Covid-19 vaccinations.

For actual public service announcements, the TV airtime is usually donated.

Public Citizen argued in its FCC and FTC complaint that the Trump ads “do not refer to any specific governmental program and they do not serve the purpose of informing the public about any specific governmental program.”

The ads were created in-house by the White House video team, two Trump advisers told CNN, and were personally driven by the president, who was involved in the selection of imagery and videos used, according to a separate source.

The Wall Street Journal first reported where the money came from.

On Tuesday, Public Citizen warned that TV stations could theoretically lose their broadcast licenses for knowingly airing the ads.

“A station knowingly broadcasting illegal, taxpayer-funded partisan propaganda has failed its public interest mandate, forming the basis of a formal license renewal challenge,” they wrote.

The track record of Trump’s FCC, however, shows the agency won’t try to penalize a station for running pro-Trump content. Instead, the agency has challenged ABC’s licenses, a move that many observers have linked to the network’s support for programs like “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” that are harshly critical of the president.

Public Citizen also filed a separate complaint Monday with the Government Accountability Office, the nonpartisan agency typically tasked with investigating this type of issue, as well as the US Office of the Special Counsel, calling for an investigation “into who produced these ads and at what cost to taxpayers.”

What constitutes illegal government propaganda, and who can be held accountable for it, is less straightforward.

Propaganda hasn’t been defined in US law, but the Government Accountability Office has identified three categories, including “self-aggrandizement” or “puffery.”

“The most immediate check on this kind of behavior is supposed to be and needs to be Congress. Congress has not asserted itself as the first branch of government with the power of the purse to hold the president accountable,” said Donald Sherman, president and CEO of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, or CREW.

GOP lawmakers may be hesitant to provide accountability, he added, because the ads “are designed to boost Republicans in Congress.”

And Hatch Act violations — government officials engaging in partisan political activity while on duty — have largely been dismissed in recent years. Trump administration officials in his first term were alleged to have repeatedly violated the Hatch Act with no penalty. The same was alleged during the Biden administration.

Public Citizen said in a previous statement that it has filed dozens of complaints with the administration about Hatch Act violations, but thinks they have been ignored.

据一家领先的政治广告追踪公司估计，数百万美元的纳税人资金已被用于唐纳德·特朗普总统的吹捧性广告。监督机构已认定这项活动违法，而为此拨款总计达2000万美元。

广告追踪公司 AdImpact 告诉 CNN，迄今为止，特朗普三则不同广告的电视播出费用至少为 250 万美元。

纳税人资助的广告宣传活动的实际成本更高，但无法完全确定。

据两名知情人士向 CNN 透露，这些广告的资金来自美国海关与边境保护局（简称 CBP）。

本月初，由拉塞尔·沃特领导的白宫管理和预算办公室拨款2000万美元给美国海关与边境保护局，用于所谓的“OBBBA纪念活动”。（OBBBA是《一项宏伟法案》（One Big Beautiful Bill Act）的缩写，该法案于2025年由特朗普签署成为法律。）

在2000万美元拨款到位后不久，美国海关与边境保护局（CBP）便与一家名为LMD Agency Inc.的广告公司签订了一份金额相同的全国性媒体广告合同。据CNN援引两位消息人士的话报道，几天后，这些广告便开始在全国电视台上播出。LMD的母公司MarCom Group未回应CNN的置评请求。

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美国海关与边境保护局（CBP）是国土安全部下属机构。周二，两位民主党参议员帕蒂·默里和克里斯·墨菲致信国土安全部长马克韦恩·穆林，指责该部门“令人震惊地滥用纳税人的钱”。

周二，这些宣传广告又面临来自政府监督组织“公众公民”（Public Citizen）的新挑战。

“这些广告似乎违反了联邦法律中关于禁止使用纳税人资金资助宣传的规定，以及拨款法和《哈奇法案》的相关条款，”公共公民组织联合主席罗伯特·韦斯曼和丽莎·吉尔伯特以及该组织的游说者克雷格·霍尔曼在向联邦通信委员会和联邦贸易委员会提交的投诉中写道。

目前尚不清楚是否有任何外部团体具有法律地位，可以就这些广告起诉特朗普政府。

尽管两党议员都对这些措施的合法性提出了质疑，但目前控制着众议院和参议院的共和党人却没有采取行动。

AdImpact 为 CNN 进行的分析发现，9 月 23 日至 29 日期间，广告共播出 2766 次。这些广告曾在福克斯新闻和四大广播电视网播出。

根据该公司的研究，约 30% 的广告支出都用于 NFL 和大学橄榄球比赛。

这些广告也曾在 ABC 的《观点》、CBS 的《艾尔斯贝斯》和 NBC 的《最弱一环》等节目中出现过。

由于这些广告被归类为“公益广告”而非传统的政治广告，因此具体的支出金额并未公开披露，也无法核实。AdImpact 的估算基于播出日期、时间、当地市场和其他因素。

该公司表示，特朗普的第一支竞选广告，配乐是 JMSN 的歌曲“Love Me”，目前已播出超过 1300 次。

本周早些时候，JMSN 的律师向白宫发出了一封停止侵权通知函，要求政府停止使用这首歌。

在三则广告的结尾，屏幕上都会出现“由美国政府支付”的字样，其中一则广告是重新制作的，取材自特朗普 2024 年总统竞选广告。

“付费”披露与政府坚持认为这些广告是“公共服务公告”，类似于过去几届政府播放的关于医疗保险、奥巴马医改和新冠疫苗的公告相矛盾。

对于真正的公益广告，电视播出时间通常是捐赠的。

公众公民组织在其向联邦通信委员会和联邦贸易委员会提交的投诉中辩称，特朗普的广告“没有提及任何具体的政府计划，也没有起到向公众宣传任何具体政府计划的作用”。

据两名特朗普顾问向 CNN 透露，这些广告是由白宫视频团队内部制作的；另有消息人士称，这些广告是由总统亲自推动的，总统参与了图片和视频的选择。

《华尔街日报》率先报道了这笔钱的来源。

周二，公众公民组织警告称，电视台如果明知故犯地播放这些广告，理论上可能会被吊销广播执照。

他们写道：“一个电台明知故犯地播放非法的、由纳税人资助的党派宣传，已经辜负了其公共利益的使命，这构成了正式提出续期执照挑战的基础。”

然而，特朗普领导下的联邦通信委员会（FCC）的过往记录表明，该机构不会因为电视台播放支持特朗普的内容而对其进行处罚。相反，该机构却对美国广播公司（ABC）的牌照提出质疑，许多观察人士认为，此举与ABC支持《吉米·坎摩尔秀》（Jimmy Kimmel Live!）等对总统持严厉批评态度的节目有关。

周一，公众公民组织还向政府问责局（一个通常负责调查此类问题的非党派机构）以及美国特别检察官办公室提交了一份单独的投诉，要求调查“是谁制作了这些广告，以及纳税人为此付出了多少代价”。

什么构成非法政府宣传，以及谁应该为此负责，这一点并不那么简单明了。

美国法律没有对宣传进行定义，但政府问责局确定了三种类别，包括“自我吹嘘”或“夸大其词”。

“对这种行为最直接的制约力量应该是也必须是国会。国会没有发挥其作为政府第一分支的作用，没有利用其财政权力来追究总统的责任，”公民责任与道德组织（CREW）总裁兼首席执行官唐纳德·谢尔曼说道。

他还补充说，共和党议员可能不愿承担责任，因为这些广告“旨在提升共和党在国会的支持率”。

近年来，违反《哈奇法案》（即政府官员在职期间参与党派政治活动）的行为大多被忽视。特朗普第一任期内的政府官员被指控多次违反《哈奇法案》，但未受到任何处罚。拜登执政期间也存在类似指控。

公众公民组织此前曾发表声明称，已就《哈奇法案》的违反向政府提出了数十项投诉，但认为这些投诉都被忽视了。