On September 20, the Department of Homeland Security awarded a twenty-million-dollar contract to a firm called LMD Agency, Inc. for what the contract describes as a “national media campaign.”

The money did not begin at Homeland Security. The White House Office of Management and Budget transferred it to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which drew it from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, and the record names the purpose in full: “OBBBA commemorative events.”

Three days later, the first advertisement aired.

They are campaign advertisements in every respect but one, and the exception is the only one the arrangement required. They run as short as fifteen seconds and as long as three minutes. Every one of them ends with the same six words on the screen: “Paid for by the U.S. government.”

The first, which aired on September 23, tells the country to “defeat communism.” One made against the Mount Rushmore backdrop announces the “golden age of America.” A third, aired during football games, names “the deep state” and casts the president’s opponents as “villains.” One is titled “God Made Trump.” One warns of a “final battle.”

Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, described where the money came from with no apparent difficulty: “It came from the One Big, Beautiful Bill.” Senator Patty Murray, vice chair of the Appropriations Committee, wrote to the department, describing the arrangement as “literally stealing their tax dollars to air campaign ads celebrating himself.” Majority Leader John Thune, who has rarely been at odds with this president, offered his objection in two sentences: “I like the message,” he said, and then, “it shouldn’t be paid for with taxpayer dollars.” Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, retiring and therefore free, said: “I hate it. It feels like Viktor Orbán talking to the Hungarian people. There’s no place for that.”

The White House had its own name for the ads. They were “public service announcements.”

Federal appropriations law restricts the use of public money for publicity or propaganda. The administration’s answer is that these are not that. They are “educational” and “unapologetically patriotic,” which is not a category the statute recognizes, and the phrase is offered in the tone of a matter settled. Nobody in the Senate, in either party, appeared to find it settled.

By Monday, the estimated cost had reached $10.1 million. By midday Tuesday, it was nearly $11.5 million. The contract had authorized twenty.

Then, on Truth Social, the president announced: “I have decided to do the Patriotic Ads, among others, and pay for them myself.” He would use, he added, “money I raised for MAGA, Inc.”

That reads like a reversal, and for a day it was reported as one. It was not. A White House spokesperson explained that “the president’s Truth was not referring to reimbursement.” The ten million dollars already spent would stay spent. The contract would stay signed. Asked whether he would reimburse the government, the president said only that “we’ll decide.”

Senator Chuck Schumer asked for the smaller thing, which is also the accurate one: “Trump must return this money to the American people.”

So here is the receipt, as flatly as the record allows.

The government of the United States bought advertisements praising the president. The advertisements said so, on screen, in six words, at the end of every one of them. When that became a political problem, the president offered to buy the next round himself, and the White House explained that he had not offered to give back the last one. The only thing that changed was the name on the check for the ads that had not aired yet.

The ads that did air are still running. They still close the same way. It is the rare government program whose own disclaimer is the most accurate sentence in it, and the only sentence in it that nobody has felt the need to defend.

Sources

CNN. (2026, October 5). “Trump says he will pay for campaign-style ads himself after backlash over taxpayer-funded effort”. KQ2.

Goldmacher, S., & Haberman, M. (2026, October 6). “Trump does not plan to reimburse taxpayers for controversial promotional ads”. The Philadelphia Inquirer.

USA TODAY. (2026, September 30). “Trump uses $20 million in DHS funds to make ads promoting self”. The Post and Courier.

PRH | huffmanwrites.org | © Philip Huffman