Investigate Trump's Taxpayer-Funded Self-Promotion Ads

Request a formal GAO ruling on the taxpayer-funded Fox News ad featuring Trump, direct the Office of Special Counsel to open a Hatch Act investigation, and include explicit language in the next appropriations bill barring any public funds from promoting the personal image of a sitting president. This ad is not a public service announcement. It's a campaign spot paid for by my tax dollars, and even Republican Senators Thom Tillis and John Kennedy said so. Tillis called it Viktor Orbán-style spending. The artist whose song was used says he never authorized it for any political agenda. The GAO already found the Bush administration broke the law against using federal funds for propaganda when it paid Armstrong Williams to promote No Child Left Behind. The same law applies here, and it needs to be enforced. This pattern goes further: $50,000 in taxpayer contracts for three-story Trump banners on federal buildings, his face in U.S. passports, his name on a coin that violates federal law requiring only deceased persons on currency. Every appropriations bill for decades has barred spending federal money on publicity or propaganda. What's missing is a Congress willing to enforce it. That's your job. Do it.

First sent on September 25 by Jeffrey Barlow