US FCC head says controversial Trump ads do not raise concerns

A series of taxpayer-funded advertisements that critics say are political campaign spots for United States President Donald Trump are not improper and do not need to be reviewed, according to the head of the country’s broadcast regulator.

“There’s nothing in there that strikes me to merit any sort of FCC review,” Brendan Carr, who Trump appointed as head of the Federal Communications Commission, said on Wednesday.

Carr likened the advertisements to public service announcements, echoing an argument the White House has made in response to criticism that Trump was using public funding to promote himself and his policies. Media freedom groups have criticised Carr for helping Trump to “weaponise” the FCC to go after news and television networks whose coverage of him he has not been happy with.

The US Constitution bars Trump from running for a third term as president, but he has nevertheless floated a third stint in the White House and has promoted merchandise bearing the words “Trump 2028”.

“The announcements are very clearly not campaign ads,” the White House said in a statement last week defending the campaign. “President Trump is not on the ballot, and there is no call to action. Instead, the announcements are a reminder for Americans to love their country and know why it’s worth defending — at home, at the border, and abroad.”

On Tuesday, Democratic senators wrote to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) asking it to stop spending funds on a series of television advertisements promoting the Trump administration’s recent actions.

“These ads need to immediately come off the air, taxpayers need to be paid back for this theft, and everyone responsible needs to be held accountable for this corrupt and illegal propaganda,” Senators Patty Murray and Chris Murphy wrote in a letter to the agency’s head. The lawmakers said DHS was planning to spend $20m on the advertisements.

But criticism of the television spots has come from prominent Democrats as well as Republican lawmakers, who have said the campaign appears to violate legal provisions meant to bar publicly funded political propaganda.

Senator Thom Tillis, a Republican from North Carolina, said the advertisements resembled something former Hungarian leader Viktor Orban would put out.

Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota said he agreed with the message in one of the advertisements, but “it shouldn’t be paid for with taxpayer dollars”.

Some Democrats have been more direct, saying the administration could face criminal liability for its actions. “This may be felony criminal theft and conversion of government property for political campaign purposes,” Jamie Raskin, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, wrote on X, citing a Trump advertisement that aired recently.

Raskin said any government employees who worked on it could have violated the Hatch Act, a 1939 law that specifically prohibits government employees from engaging in political activities.

‘Love me’

The advertisements have aired on national television during national sports matches and other highly-watched programming.

One advertisement is a monochrome video featuring Trump walking down a hall in slow motion. In an audio clip taken from his last presidential election campaign, Trump can be heard saying Americans are now engaged in a “final battle” and that he and his supporters will “demolish the deep state, expel the warmongers from our government, we will drive out the globalists, we will cast out the communists, Marxists and fascists”.

In another advertisement, a montage of Trump is shown with audio of him saying, “Together, we will defeat communism, socialism, and Marxism,” before text in red capital letters notes a series of claimed accomplishments like “largest tax cuts in American history” and “reigniting American manufacturing”.

The advertisement is set to a song titled Love Me by artist JMSN, who wrote last week on X that Trump had used it without permission. Lawyers representing the artist wrote to the White House on Monday, saying they would take further action if the music was not removed from the video. JMSN, the letter said “does not want to be viewed as directly or indirectly affiliated with the President or his Administration.”