Donald Trump spent $20 million in taxpayer money — routed through the Department of Homeland Security — on television advertisements that ran during Saturday Night Live and football games in September. The ads featured Trump himself, combative slogans about expelling warmongers and defeating communism, and the fine print: "paid for by the US government." They were not public service announcements. They were campaign material aired weeks before the November 3 midterm elections. After sustained criticism from political opponents, NGOs, and legal experts, Trump announced Monday that future ads would be funded by donations rather than public money. He framed the reversal as a concession to the "radical Left," while simultaneously claiming that using taxpayer funds for such ads was "a rather standard thing to do." It is not. Federal law explicitly prohibits the use of appropriated public funds for government propaganda, self-aggrandizement, or partisan political advertising, as the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen noted in a formal complaint to the FCC. The timing is the sharpest problem. Patrick Malone, a professor of public administration at American University, pointed out that while Trump technically isn't saying "vote for me," running government-branded ads weeks before a midterm election crosses a functional line. The ads promote the president's personal brand at a moment when his party's congressional candidates need every boost they can get — and many of them don't want to be seen with him. The Republican position heading into November is genuinely fragile. A Reuters/Ipsos poll released Monday shows the GOP's advantage among voters 50 and older has collapsed from 8 points in December to just 2 points (44% to 42%). Among voters under 50, Democrats lead by 18 points. Trump's own approval sits at 32%, unchanged from his career low. Republicans hold slim majorities — 53 of 100 Senate seats, 219 of 435 House seats — and the math is tightening. Republican candidates are treating the president like a liability. Susan Collins of Maine and Dan Sullivan of Alaska — both facing reelection — skipped Trump's September convention. House candidates from swing states Arizona, Iowa, and Michigan also stayed away. One Republican operative told Politico, anonymously, that if Trump visited a battleground state, their candidates would "come down with COVID" to avoid sharing a stage with him. Trump's response to his own toxicity has been escalation through spectacle. At his convention, he urged supporters to "pretend" he was on the ballot. Then he promised every eligible American voter $5,000 if Republicans maintained both chambers — a pledge that would cost over $1.2 trillion and has no funding mechanism, no congressional authorization, and no serious prospect of delivery. Malone compared it directly to the "Mexico will pay for the wall" promise. The pattern is clear: a president spending public money on personal promotion, making unfundable promises to mobilize voters, and watching his own party's candidates avoid him in public. Whether any of it moves the needle on November 3 is the remaining question.
