Former White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney on Monday sharply criticized a new taxpayer-funded television advertisement from the White House that promotes President Trump, calling it “wrong, it flat out is.”
The 30-second spot, which aired during NFL broadcasts over the weekend, features Trump's voiceover declaring that the U.S. will “cast out the communists, Marxists, and fascists” and “rout the fake news media, and we will liberate America from these villains once and for all,” adding, “this is the final battle.” The background music is “Love Me” by JMSN, the stage name of Christian Berishaj.
In an interview on NewsNation's “NewsNation Live” with host Connell McShane, Mulvaney questioned whether anyone inside the White House had raised objections. “Is there someone in the White House who thinks this is wrong?” he asked. “Yeah, I think there probably is. Do they have the guts to walk in and tell the president? That's the real question.”
He went on to highlight what he sees as a partisan double standard. “It's wrong, it flat out is,” Mulvaney said. “Is there anyone who really thinks that if Joe Biden had done the same thing, that every single Republican in the whole country would be jumping mad over it? I mean, it's just the double standards.”
Mulvaney warned that such moves are politically damaging. “This is what's hurting them, that they look like they're becoming detached from what ordinary Americans care about. And again, I don't know if the polls are right or not, but if the Republicans lose, there's going to be no shortage of reasons that they did.”
The ad ran during commercial breaks in two NFL games: the Seattle Seahawks vs. Washington Commanders and the Cleveland Browns vs. Carolina Panthers. It drew immediate bipartisan criticism on Capitol Hill. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) called it “inappropriate,” comparing it to something former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán might release. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) posted on X that the ad violated the Hatch Act, calling the use of government resources “blatantly unethical.”
“This may be felony criminal theft and conversion of government property for political campaign purposes,” Raskin wrote. “It is a Hatch Act violation for any government employees who worked on it or used government resources to make it.”
Trump is not on the ballot in the upcoming midterm elections, and the ad does not promote any specific candidates. The White House has defended the spot, with a spokesperson telling The Hill that “ads don't have a call to action” and that the “PSAs are clearly not political.”
Former White House ethics attorney Richard Painter also weighed in, writing on X that the ad could be an impeachable offense. “@POTUS has no right to use taxpayer money for campaign ads. Congress has expressly prohibited government sponsored political propaganda, which is dangerous for democracy,” he said.
The controversy comes amid broader concerns about the administration's use of public funds for political messaging. For more on the legal and ethical debates, see taxpayer-funded ads and the midterm push. The ad's tone has also drawn comparisons to Trump's recent attacks on UK bail decisions, and it follows a pattern of Trump's controversial foreign policy statements.
