It's neither a joke nor fake news but a real report from earlier this week: Donald Trump has backed down. On Monday, the US president announced that a series of advertisements aired in September promoting him and his administration would no longer be funded with taxpayer money. "The radical Left is upset with the fact that I am taking ads, which I consider to be a positive promotion for our great USA, and paying for them with USA money," Trump wrote on his platform Truth Social.
He went on to claim that funding partisan ads with public money was a "rather standard thing to do," before adding that future ads would be paid with money raised from donations. The ads themselves have caused some controversy in the United States. They ran in September between popular shows such as Saturday Night Live and football games, marked with the line: "paid for by the US government" — that is, paid with tax dollars.
The commercials showed scenes such as when US troops captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro earlier this year but they mostly consisted of images and videos of Trump himself, along with combative messages that he would "expel the warmongers" or "throw off the sick political class," and ensure that the US did not become a communist state. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Political opponents and a series of NGOs responded to the campaign with sharp criticism. Not only does US law prohibit the use of taypayer funds for political advertisements, but the ads also appeared shortly before the midterms — elections held near the midpoint of a president's four-year term.
On Tuesday, the US broadcasting network CBS reported that, according to contracting records, the US Department of Homeland Security had paid an agency $20 million (€17.9 million) for a "national media campaign." The "rather standard" practice that Trump referred to actually applies to public service announcements, but this is not what the campaign ads are, argued the US non-profit consumer advocacy group Public Citizen. "Federal law explicitly prohibits using appropriated public funds for government propaganda, self-aggrandizement, or partisan political advertising," the organization wrote in a public complaint to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ."Yet, that is exactly the nature of Trump's recent campaign ads." Independent experts have also voiced concerns. Patrick Malone, a professor in the department of Public Administration and Policy at American University in Washington DC, said the timing of the videos was problematic.
"You're not supposed to use taxpayer dollars to pay for anything that's campaign-related," he told DW. "Technically, [Trump] is not campaigning. He's not saying 'Vote for me!' The thing that's created the challenge here is the timing.
Weeks before the midterms, this is a real big issue." Voters do not choose presidents in the midterm elections but members of Congres, which comprises the Senate and the House of Representatives and is the legislative branch of the federal government. On November 3, those eligible to vote will cast their ballots for all the seats in the House of Representatives, and roughly a third of the seats in the Senate. Some states will also be choosing governors.
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