Trump Admin. Spends Big Taxpayer Money on Ads Thanking Trump
Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s administration has been firing federal workers en masse, pausing and shuttering whole federal agencies, and furiously hunting for examples of waste, fraud, and abuse that they can show their supporters to prove all the destruction is necessary and good.
At the same time, Trump’s Department of Homeland Security has now budgeted as much as $200 million on anti-immigrant ads — and the first round of them make clear his administration intends to use this immense amount of public money to very specifically promote Trump, both in America and around the globe.
While the ads, which feature Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, are ostensibly designed to convince undocumented immigrants to self-deport from the United States or avoid coming here at all, the domestic and international versions of the ad feature Noem repeatedly lavishing praise on Trump.
“Thank you, President Donald J. Trump, for securing our border, for deporting criminal illegal immigrants, and for putting America first,” Noem says in the domestic ad. “President Trump has a clear message for those that are in our country illegally, leave now, if you don’t, we will find you and we will deport you.” She adds that “under President Trump, America’s borders are closed to law-breakers.”
In the international version of the ad, Noem again directly thanks Trump “for securing our border and putting America first,” before delivering “a message from President Trump to the world.” The message: “If you are considering entering America illegally, don’t even think about it.”
She continues, “Under President Trump, we are defending American families and restoring their safety.” In closing, she adds, “President Trump is making America safe again.”
The 60-second ads are part of an administration-wide propaganda blitz to show that Trump is cracking down on immigrants. The ads also happen to look, sound, and feel exactly like campaign ads.
Both ad versions include soaring music and feature numerous snippets of Trump in action — saluting troops, waving around, signing executive orders, speaking at podiums — to the point where the casual viewer would likely have no idea they are watching their tax dollars being burned on these TV ads.
According to a Homeland Security Department press release, “This series of ads will run on radio, broadcast, and digital, in multiple countries and regions in various dialects. Ads will be hyper-targeted, including through social media, text message and digital to reach illegal immigrants in the interior of the United States, as well as internationally.”
Not mentioned in that press release: As Semafor reported Tuesday, the Trump administration has budgeted up to $200 million for this new anti-immigrant ad campaign.
If there was any question whether Trump and the wrecking ball that is Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, intend to root out wasteful spending whatsoever, this ad campaign should provide a definitive answer: no, absolutely not.
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