Judge Immediately Pulls the Plug on Trump’s Bonkers Propaganda Blitz
The ruling came on the same evening the taxpayer-funded ads were due to air.
President Donald Trump has been hit with a major legal setback over his divisive taxpayer-funded ads.
Trump, 80, had aired several TV ads at the public’s expense, including a 2024 campaign spot, an anti-communist message, an excerpt from his July 4 speech, and a pro-Iran war video that featured Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth insisting that the U.S. didn’t start the conflict.
The Trump administration had already spent over $11 million on more than a dozen of the “Patriotic Ads,” according to advertising analytics firm AdImpact, reportedly funded through a $20 million Department of Homeland Security contract. They have aired on national television networks over the past two weeks.
President Donald Trump has had his ads pulled off air.
Eric Lee/REUTERS
But on Sunday evening a federal judge issued an order to cancel the ads, effectively immediately, pulling them from primetime TV.
U.S. District Judge Jennifer Rochon ordered the DHS to pull the ads, including those that had been slated to air on Sunday night, and barred the White House and other federal agencies from continuing with the pro-Trump ad campaign, Politico reported.
“Defendants are enjoined from using, disbursing, or transferring funds appropriated to the Department of Homeland Security to develop, create, disseminate, place, distribute, publish, or air the challenged advertisements,” wrote Rochon, who was appointed by President Joe Biden.
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The ruling meant the ads had to stop airing by 6:45 p.m. Eastern time, depriving them of critical primetime exposure.
The commercial says it was paid for by the U.S. government—which is funded by the U.S. taxpayer.
AdImpact
The order also enforced the ruling with Maryland marketing firm LMD Media, which purchased the slots the ads ran in on Fox, CNN, MSNOW, Newsmax, CBS, ABC and ESPN.
The Trump administration had attempted to circumvent the court ruling with the DHS telling Rochon late Saturday they had “no plans” to have the ads run after Sunday.
The Democratic National Committee and Common Cause filed separate lawsuits in an attempt to stop the ads. Democracy Forward posted on X on Sunday evening, “We won a court order blocking Trump’s taxpayer-funded political ads. There is no legal justification for the president to use taxpayer dollars to unlawfully influence electoral outcomes that further his own agenda.”
President Donald Trump had claimed he would pay for his own ads.
Eric Lee/REUTERS
Speaking on CNN, the network’s chief media analyst Brian Stelter asked viewers to report if they saw any ads airing after the 6:45 p.m. window.
One social media said they had spotted the pro-Trump ads on Seattle TV around 6:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.
“This comes as there has been bipartisan backlash to these propagandistic ads, very clearly meant to prop up President Trump and the GOP in the final weeks of the midterms,” Stelter said.
He noted the judge had “drawn a line in the sand” to stop more ads airing before the elections commence.
The White House tried to argue that the ads were “presidential public service announcements” rather than public-funded propaganda.
Last month, when the ads began to surface, rogue Republican Thomas Massie posted on X, “Don’t worry, using taxpayer dollars to run ominous campaign ads of the President has been done before and is completely legal… in banana republics."
Trump even suggested last week after “the Radical Left” were upset with his ads, he would “pay for them myself, and with money I raised for MAGA. Inc.”
“I think the president was highly misleading about this,” Stelter claimed on Sunday, about the Oct. 5 Truth Social post.
Brian Stelter on CNN.
CNN
“He talked as if he was immediately making changes and moving away from the taxpayer funding... but it turns out it was not, because these ads had continued to run at taxpayer expense for an entire week.”
“So it seems to me the president took advantage of the news cycle, played it as if he was fixing this right away and changing course, but in fact, all the ads kept running all week long,” Stelter said.
He added, “It was so unprecedented to have a government, a presidential administration, running promotional propagandistic ads using taxpayer money. These were nothing like the PSAs that we saw during COVID, for example.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
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