The ads are easy to describe. In one, Donald Trump's face fills the screen while the song "Love Me" plays and his voice says that "America will never be a communist country." Another is the same video his 2024 campaign used to condemn "villains." A third has him and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth talking about the Iran war. Every one ends with a tagline that is unusual for a government spot: "Paid for by the U.S. government."
The money is the harder part to see, and it is the part that matters.
One Day
According to the New York Times, on September 19 the Office of Management and Budget shifted $20 million in Customs and Border Protection funds into a budget category called "One Big Beautiful Bill Commemorative Events." The next day, September 20, CBP awarded a $20 million contract to LMD Agency, a marketing firm in Columbia, Maryland. The airtime itself was bought by a second firm, LMO, according to one person the Times spoke with.
The contract half of that is in the public record. USAspending lists award 70B06C26F00001137: $20,000,000 obligated to LMD Agency, Inc., signed September 20, 2026, description "NATIONAL MEDIA CAMPAIGN," awarded by CBP's Mission Support Contracting Division, firm fixed price, a one-year period of performance running to September 19, 2027. It is a call against an existing multiple-award vehicle, marked "subject to multiple award fair opportunity," and the record shows the whole $20 million obligated as of its last modification on September 21.
That detail cuts both ways, and the Old Goat wants it on the page. A fair-opportunity call against a pre-competed vehicle is not a no-bid award. LMD is a real agency with a record of Homeland Security marketing work, including Coast Guard marketing and advertising contracts and a communications task order for the cybersecurity agency in the last year. What the record cannot show is how a "commemorative events" line, built from border-security money, became a national television buy for the president's image in under twenty-four hours.
Who Said It Was Legal
Federal law has barred appropriated funds from being used for "publicity or propaganda" purposes for decades, and the Government Accountability Office has enforced it before. It found the Bush administration's Medicare video news releases to be illegal "covert propaganda" in 2004 and found a violation in the Education Department's payments to commentator Armstrong Williams and a public relations firm in 2005. As the Times notes, GAO has also found likely or confirmed violations under Barack Obama. Those cases concerned campaigns for policies, not ads centered on the president himself.
According to the Times, the sign-off here came from two lawyers. Mark Paoletta, counsel at the Office of Management and Budget, and Will Scharf, the White House counsel, both told the president that using Homeland Security money would be legal. Neither the Times nor any other outlet reported an opinion from GAO, from the Homeland Security Department's own legal staff, or from an outside reviewer. The department's only comment was that it "follows all applicable rules for contracting decisions."
Two lawyers who work for the offices that asked for the money are an answer. Whether they are a sufficient one is exactly what a legal opinion from outside the chain would settle, and nothing reported says one was sought.
The Money That Was Not Used
The Times reports that Trump personally told OMB Director Russell Vought to come up with the money from within the government, and that Trump and chief of staff Susie Wiles both spoke with Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin about the ads. The paper says it is not clear why taxpayer money was used and not the president's super PAC.
That question has sharp edges. MAGA Inc. entered the fall with $400 million, and Trump said last month it is "my money that I control." In the same weeks the PAC put more than $20 million into the Texas Senate race and two linked groups spent or reserved $163 million more across the country. On August 7, according to the Times, Trump spent part of an Oval Office meeting watching videos of himself, and made clear that his presidency needed to be promoted, front and center, in the commercials his advisers were making. A Trump-linked nonprofit, Securing American Greatness, then aired a Dana White testimonial for just under $60,000 around Washington on September 2 and 3, where the president would be sure to see it. Weeks later, the taxpayer-funded spots began airing nationwide.Donors →
The Old Goat cannot say why the cheaper, plainly legal option was passed over. The record shows only that the president had the PAC money, knew it, and used the government's instead.
October 5
Then came a reversal. On Monday, October 5, Trump said he had "decided to do the Patriotic Ads, among others, and pay for them myself, and with money I raised for MAGA, Inc.," according to the Associated Press. The White House confirmed the PAC will fund future ads. It gave no details on repaying taxpayers for the ones that already ran, or on how the PAC's payments would be handled.
Days earlier, pressed by a reporter, Trump had said: "If somebody said that that's wrong, I'll gladly pay the money." What has been announced so far is payment for ads from here on, and nothing about the ones already aired.
Measured airtime so far is a fraction of the contract. AdImpact figures reported by different outlets as the campaign grew range from $1.5 million to $1.7 million, then to about $2.5 million, and $5.5 million for at least four spots in the Times account. CNN has counted at least 13 spots made. Those are different dates and different measures, and the Old Goat does not add them together. The obligation sitting on the federal books is $20 million.
What The Defense Says
The White House calls the ads public service announcements and says they carry no "call to action" to vote for any candidate. Aides have noted that Trump is not on any ballot. After the criticism, communications director Steven Cheung's office sent an email stating that "presidential public service announcements are nothing new." Trump himself said, "I'm not promoting a candidate. I'm not promoting myself because I'm not running for office. I'm promoting the country."
The tagline also matters in the government's favor. GAO's "covert propaganda" findings turned on the public not knowing the government was the source, and these ads say plainly that it is. That removes one legal theory and leaves the other: whether the spots amount to "publicity or propaganda" on their own terms, which the critics, including some Republicans, say they do.
What To Watch
Three things will show whether October 5 closes the matter or only changes who gets billed. First, USAspending: if the $20 million award is modified, reduced or de-obligated, the taxpayer exposure shrinks, and if it is not, the money is committed regardless of what the PAC pays. Second, MAGA Inc.'s next FEC filing, which should show whether it pays LMD, LMO or a media buyer, and how much. Third, any GAO decision or congressional request, since the question of the ads that already aired does not go away because future ones will be paid for differently.
The president had $400 million of his own to spend on this. The record shows he used twenty million of yours first, and offered to pay only after the backlash.
That sequence is the Old Goat's whole point. Everything else is paperwork that will be sorted by whoever has the authority to sort it.