WASHINGTON DC, U.S.A. (The Daily Whatever Press) — Every Gen Xer knows the first law of the mixtape: you make it for somebody else. You agonize over the track order, you hand-letter the J-card, you hand it over and hope. A mixtape you make for yourself, with somebody else’s money, is a cry for help with a cassette attached.
The president just made one for $20 million.
The Department of Homeland Security has tapped $20 million to pay for campaign-style ads glorifying President Donald Trump, with the contract going to a marketing firm called LMD Agency for a national media campaign. In the first ad, Trump urges Americans to defeat communism and brags about his economic record and personal resilience while a choir in the background sings “Love me.”
Seriously satire is dead, y’all. This shit writes itself and I’m just here to capture it.
The song is by JMSN, and his attorneys already send the White House a cease-and-desist letter. Because OF COURSE no one bothered to secure the rights for the song. Aside to JMSN: if you need money for legal costs, I’d donate to the GoFundMe in a half a second. We all would.
The second is a black-and-white spot closely resembling a 2024 Trump campaign video, in which Trump warns of a “final battle.” The third shows Mount Rushmore while Trump narrates about American exceptionalism. All three carry the disclaimer “Paid for by the U.S. Government” and have run during NFL and college football broadcasts.
So somewhere between third-and-long and a beer commercial, an 80-year-old man is asking America’s football fans to love him — then sending them the bill.
Every woman alive has dated this guy. He buys himself flowers on your credit card and calls it romance.
The money came from roughly $175 billion that the One Big Beautiful Bill gave DHS for immigration enforcement and deportation, and it was meant for U.S. Customs and Border Protection. House Democrats say OMB director Russ Vought moved it from Homeland Security into the ad campaign. That’s just a little weird, until you remember what else the Big Beautiful Bill did, which was cut Medicaid and food stamps, which means the same law that took health care and groceries away from millions of Americans also built the deportation fund that bought the president a choir. Oh. Oh no.
Then it’s not just weird — it’s despicable.
Meanwhile, Trump’s own political committee, MAGA Inc., is sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars that it could spend during the midterm season. He has his own a valentine budget. He just likes yours better. When my daughters want something they could pay for themselves, they at least ask first and look a little ashamed. The Lover-in-Chief skipped both steps.
The White House insists the spots are “educational and unapologetically patriotic.” Edu-fucking-cational. The only lesson on offer is that you can apparently launder a campaign ad through a border budget as long as it airs during a punt. Critics in both parties call the ads a blatant misuse of taxpayer dollars that likely violates the anti-propaganda law, and George W. Bush’s former White House ethics attorney Richard Painter even said it could be an impeachable offense.
As if impeachment even matters with this guy anymore.
Even some Republicans can see it. Thom Tillis — who announced his retirement last year after clashing with Trump over the megabill, and good for him — compared the ads to the ones Hungary’s authoritarian former leader Viktor Orbán used. It took a Republican with no reelection left to lose to speak up, so forgive me if he only gets minimal applause for finally growing something that resembles a spine. Then there’s Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who told reporters, “I like the message … but it shouldn’t be paid for with taxpayer dollars.”
Now it that’s not the entire modern GOP in one breath: love the song, hate the receipt, do absolutely fucking nothing about either.
My senator, Patty Murray, is at least doing something. She and Chris Murphy wrote to DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin and gave him 48 hours to explain how the president is “literally stealing their tax dollars” to air ads celebrating himself. I’ve enthusiastically voted for her year after year, and this is just one example of why.
AdImpact estimates more than $2.5 million went out the door in the first seven days. That leaves roughly $17.5 million of love in the tank, seven weeks before the midterms.
Cool, cool.
In 1989, Lloyd Dobler stood in the rain holding a boombox over his head for a girl who had just dumped him. It’s still the most desperate romantic gesture our generation ever produced, and he paid for the batteries himself.
Buy your own fucking batteries.
Hi, I’m Dana. And I Write Out Loud.
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Yes, pay for the batteries yourself and take some of the BS money and give it to a food bank. I would love for you Dana to write about someone in America hijacking money to go to hungry kids and families it is going to get worse and I am definitely not ready. Remember when we would pay hide 'n seek, "ready or not here I come."