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# Trump Is Using Taxpayer Money on Ads. Where’s the Legal Line?

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<!-- video src="https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/UEB67P6h.m3u8" -->
## Video: Trump Is Using Taxpayer Money on Ads. Where’s the Legal Line?

[Watch (HLS stream): Trump Is Using Taxpayer Money on Ads. Where’s the Legal Line?](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/UEB67P6h.m3u8) (1:26)

![Trump Is Using Taxpayer Money on Ads. Where’s the Legal Line?](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/UEB67P6h/poster.jpg?width=720)

_Published 2026-10-01_


---

Oct 1, 2026 5:01 PM UTC

---

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---


## Transcript

Have you seen the latest campaign ads from President Donald Trump? Together, we will defeat communism, socialism, and Marxism in America once and for all. The content of the ads may seem familiar, but this time they're funded by your taxpayer dollars. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have condemned the ads and called them, quote, illegal. Here's what you need to know about what the law says on the matter in one minute. So far, the ad campaign has cost over $1 million, according to estimates from Adimpact, and the ads have run during prime time slots like Sunday Night Football. Yet Trump actually signed a measure in February banning the use of taxpayer funds for publicity or propaganda.

The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office traditionally interprets this to mean any material that is, quote, purely partisan. Lawmakers have also argued that the ads might violate the 1939 Hatch Act, which limits the political activities of federal employees in the executive branch. The white House, meanwhile, has defended the videos as, quote, public service announcements and compares them to ads released by previous administrations. Watchdog organizations disagree that these ads match the neutral messaging of prior campaigns and have filed complaints with the Gao. The next milestone is October 8th, the deadline Democratic Senator Maggie Hassan set for the white House to explain how these ads were funded and provide legal justification.

If the judge finds that the spending was illegal, it could trigger a formal report to Congress, just as the agency called for in 2004, when it found that Bush era videos amounted to covert propaganda.

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