The government has spent nearly $22 million in all since the campaign began in late September. Trump announced the change in a Truth Social post, writing that he would "pay for them myself, and with money I raised for MAGA, Inc." The ads kept airing anyway, even after a federal judge ordered them to come down.
A lawsuit filed by Common Cause and others argues the government funded the ads without congressional approval and broke restrictions on publicity and propaganda produced with taxpayer dollars. The White House has repeatedly called them public service announcements. There are five ads in all, and one is a splashy montage of photos of the president with a chorus singing "love me" as the soundtrack.
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have criticized the ads. Republicans praised Trump's choice to shift the funding to an outside super PAC, but that praise came too soon.
Another of the five is an exact duplicate of an ad the Trump campaign made during the 2024 election cycle.