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                    "As the White House expands a taxpayer-funded advertising campaign to promote Donald Trump\u2019s political agenda before the November midterm elections, US senator John Kennedy told CBS News on Sunday \u201cthere ought to be a rule\u201d against such spending \u2013 before tacitly admitting such spending is \u201cprobably\u201d illegal.Kennedy, the US president\u2019s fellow Republican, was asked by Margaret Brennan, the CBS Face the Nation host, about the White House spending to air multiple ads featuring Trump \u2013 including one that was produced for his 2024 election campaign.Brennan first reminded Kennedy that in March he had rebuked Kristi Noem, then Trump\u2019s homeland security secretary, for spending millions in government funds \u201cto bolster her public image\u201d in a $220m series of ads she starred in. She then asked the Louisiana senator to comment on the new ads featuring Trump, which the White House calls \u201cpublic service announcements\u201d.\u201cOur viewers are going to see a 30-second commercial on this program,\u201d Brennan said. \u201cIt\u2019s on all major networks \u2013 it\u2019s on the cable networks as well. It prominently features President Trump, and there\u2019s a voice praising him as \u2018the toughest, most resilient person I ever met\u2019. And at the end, it says \u2018paid for by the US government\u2019. Is that the best use of taxpayer money?\u201dKennedy replied: \u201cWell, first, as to secretary Noem, what she did was masterclass dumb. She spent $220[m] on commercials about her, and I called her out on it.\u201d\u201cThis looks like a commercial about President Trump,\u201d Brennan noted, referring to the first ad in the series, a 30-second highlight reel of Trump\u2019s second presidency, punctuated by on-screen text driving his political agenda and suggesting Democrats are communists.\u201cI don\u2019t think any public official, including President Trump or Kristi Noem or John Kennedy, should spend public money \u2026 on private ads for themselves,\u201d Kennedy replied. \u201cNow, the White House sees it differently. But \u2026 I think there ought to be a rule that you can\u2019t \u2013 well, there probably is a rule \u2013 you can\u2019t spend public money to promote yourself.\u201dKennedy, a lawyer with degrees from both the University of Virginia and University of Oxford, appeared to be tacitly acknowledging the argument made by Jamie Raskin, a Democratic congressman and legal scholar, that any government employees who worked on the first pro-Trump ad \u2013 \u201cor used government resources to make it\u201d \u2013 may have committed a felony violation of the Hatch act, a law that bars government workers from partisan campaign activities.According to Medium Buying, a company that buys airtime for Republican candidates, the Trump administration used more taxpayer funds to broadcast another partisan ad featuring the president that aired nationwide on Saturday during a college football game between Ohio State and Illinois on Fox. It aired again during Fox News Sunday.That 30-second spot shows a moody, black-and-white shot of Trump staring into the camera as the soundtrack plays the closing riff of a campaign speech he gave dozens of times in 2023 and 2024.\u201cThis is the final battle,\u201d Trump says in the ad. \u201cWith you at my side, we will demolish the deep state; we will expel the warmongers from our government; we will drive out the globalists; we will cast out the communists, Marxists and fascists,\u201d he continues, with cheers from a crowd. Those cheers indicate that the audio was recorded during a campaign rally and at a time before he used his power as president to start a war with Iran that has left some supporters feeling betrayed.\u201cWe will rout the fake news media, and we will liberate our country from these tyrants and villains once and for all,\u201d Trump can be heard promising in language clearly calculated to appeal to Christian supporters by echoing the biblical story of Jesus driving merchants and money changers from the temple in Jerusalem.The newest ad, with on-screen text reading \u201cPaid for by the US Government\u201d, is even more obviously a partisan product than the first one. In fact, the ad was created for Trump\u2019s 2024 election campaign. And it was posted on his Truth Social account in 2023 and 2024 with a plea for funds from supporters.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe rhetoric was written in to Trump\u2019s standard campaign speech as early as July 2023, and then repeated by him again and again at dozens of rallies and appeals for donations.A screenshot from a Trump campaign ad played at the Republican national convention on 18 July 2024. Photograph: CSPANThe ad was even played on giant screens during the 2024 Republican national convention before Trump\u2019s speech accepting his party\u2019s nomination. When it was broadcast during the convention by C-SPAN on 18 July 2024, the ad was identified as material \u201cprovided by the Republican National Committee\u201d.At the end of his interview with CBS on Sunday, Kennedy volunteered that he also opposed Trump\u2019s drive to put his own name on public buildings.\u201cI also think that we ought to have a rule that no politician can have a building named after him while he\u2019s alive,\u201d Kennedy said, before adding that there is such a statute in his home state.\u201cWell, we\u2019ll watch, Senator, if you introduce that,\u201d Brennan responded."
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