Mick Mulvaney: Trump ad ‘flat out’ wrong

Former White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney on Monday said that a new taxpayer-funded TV advertisement from the White House promoting President Trump is “flat out” wrong.

The 30-second ad features Trump saying in a voiceover 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,” stating that “this is the final battle.”

The song “Love Me” by JMSN, singer Christian Berishaj’s moniker, plays in the background.

“Is there someone in the White House who thinks this is wrong?” Mulvaney asked “NewsNation Live” host Connell McShane on NewsNation, The Hill’s broadcast partner, while discussing the commercial. “Yeah, I think there probably is. Do they have the guts to walk in and tell the president? That’s the real question.”

Mulvaney later asked if there was anyone “who really thinks that if [former President] 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,” he continued. “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 appeared during two respective commercial breaks during two NFL matches — one between the Seattle Seahawks and the Washington Commanders, the other between the Cleveland Browns and the Carolina Panthers.

Questions swirled about the ad, with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle criticizing it.

Republican Sen. Thom Tillis (N.C.) called it “inappropriate” and compared it to something former right-wing Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán would release. Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin (Md.) wrote on the social platform X that it violated the Hatch Act, calling the use of government resources toward the ad “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 for this year’s November midterm elections, and the ad does not promote any candidates seeking office.

The White House defended the ad, with a spokesperson previously telling The Hill that “ads don’t have a call to action” and that the “PSAs [public service announcements] are clearly not political.”

Former White House ethics attorney Richard Painter on Sunday wrote 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,” Painter wrote.