R&B singer JMSN is blasting Donald Trump for using his song “Love Me,” in a bizarre new ad glorifying the president.
Trump is also drawing scrutiny for using taxpayer dollars to produce the ad, which blares “Love Me” while touting his policies, despite a federal ban on spending public money for political promotion.
The 30-second ad, which debuted this week on right-wing news outlets, features a portion of JMSN’s song with a chorus singing “I’ll make them love me” over and over against a montage of the 80-year-old president.
“America will never be a communist country,” Trump says in the short spot, before UFC CEO Dana White gushes over the president: “He is the toughest, most resilient person that I’ve ever met, and nothing was going to stop him from fighting so hard for the country he loves.”
The ad also rattles off a list of Trump’s supposed accomplishments, flashing claims such as “Largest tax cuts in history,” “Reigniting American manufacturing,” and “Defend law and order and police.”
JMSN, whose real name is Christian Berishaj, accused Trump on Instagram of “illegally” using his song in the ad.
He argued that “this could have gone 2 ways.”
“1. The President or his team reach out and ask to license the song, I respond ‘no’ and you never know about it.
“2. The President illegally uses the song without asking but still the public goes full r----d and immediately assumes that a license was.”
“Obviously it went the second way,” the singer wrote.
JMSN, who was born to an Albanian father and grew up in Detroit, Michigan, wrote, “To anybody who has followed my career and knows what I stand for and built my career on, it should go without saying that I would never authorize my music to be used for ANY political agenda or campaign.”
The indie artist said he doesn’t have a publicist, “so being forced in a situation like this and having to comment is ridiculous,” before declaring, “I am looking at lawyers and handling this internally.”
The White House did not immediately respond to the Daily Beast’s questions about the ad.
The commercial, which is airing on Fox News and Newsmax just weeks before the midterms, includes a tag reading, “Paid for by the U.S. Government.”
But federal law prohibits the use of federal funds for “publicity or propaganda purposes,” including communications that are “purely partisan” and “designed to aid a political party or candidates,” according to The Washington Post.
In a statement to the Post, the White House insisted that the ad is purely a “public service announcement” about “reminding Americans to love their country and understand what makes it worth defending, at home, at our borders, and abroad.”
“The ad is educational and unapologetically patriotic,” the statement claims.
Despite the White House’s claims, the release of the ad came against a clear political backdrop, after Trump told Republicans ahead of the midterms to “pretend that I’m on the ballot.”
Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said in an X post that the ad could constitute “felony criminal theft and conversion of government property for political campaign purposes.”
“It is blatantly unethical under numerous federal ethics provisions proscribing the use of government resources for political campaigns,” he said.
