The White House Is Airing An Ominous Ad On Fox News — And It Could Be An Abuse Of Power

A new ad that showed President Donald Trump condemning communism, socialism and Marxism aired Wednesday night on Fox News during Jesse Watters’ show.

The commercial, which featured a disclaimer that it was “Paid for by the U.S. Government,” showed Trump saying, “America will never be a communist country,” and included a clip of UFC boss Dana White praising Trump at the 2024 Republican National Convention, calling him the “toughest, most resilient person that I’ve ever met and nothing is gonna stop him from fighting so hard for the country he loves.”

So I was just watching Fox News and this commercial played during Jesse Watters show. It says “Paid for by the US Government.”
This is clearly a campaign ad. And the singers are just singing over and over again, “Love me” – over images of Trump. @CBSMiami @CBSNews pic.twitter.com/eCkEZpipWx

— Jim DeFede (@DeFede) September 24, 2026

The song “Love Me” by JMSN plays over flashes of photos of Trump. JMSN did not authorize the use of his music in the video, he told HuffPost.

“I am looking for a lawyer now in order to see what our options are and how to proceed,” he said. “I have never been in this situation before.”

Critics slammed the ad as “propaganda” and a violation of the Hatch Act, a 1939 federal law that limits most executive branch employees from using their offices to support or perform certain political activities and endorsements.

Presidents and vice presidents are exempt from the Hatch Act, but the ad could still violate government restrictions against using taxpayer money into political propaganda.

“It is a political ad and cannot be paid for out of federal funds,” Richard Painter, a corporate law professor at the University of Minnesota Law School, told HuffPost. Painter served as the chief White House ethics lawyer for the George W. Bush administration between 2005 and 2007.

A White House spokesperson told HuffPost it was not a political ad, but a PSA, which is classified as a noncommercial, nonpartisan message for the public.

“These public service announcements are about reminding Americans to love their country and understand what makes it worth defending, at home, at our borders, and abroad,” the White House said. “The ad is educational and unapologetically patriotic. We should be proud of our country.”

The White House did not respond to HuffPost’s questions about which government group funded the ad or what made it a PSA rather than promotional content about the president.

When comparing the Trump ad to PSAs from previous administrations — such as former President Joe Biden’s “We Can Do This” campaign to encourage COVID vaccinations and Bush’s Department of Health and Human Services PSAs about the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003 — Painter told HuffPost the comparison “makes no sense.”

“Those ads were about particular issues the public should be informed about — prescription drug coverage under Medicare and drug use by young people,” he said. “This video by contrast is a political ad focused on one man, Trump, and how great he is at standing up to communism. There isn’t even any specifics about the source of the threat of communism, and it’s being aired weeks before election day.”

Michael J. Gerhardt, a professor of jurisprudence at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, told HuffPost he also disagrees with the PSA classification: Instead, Trump’s ad walks a line between campaigning and abusing power.

“The problem here, as with most of what the president is doing, blurs the line between doing a campaign ad and addressing the public as president,” Gerhardt said. “The Supreme Court in Trump v. United States declared that, when campaigning, a president is engaging in personal, not presidential conduct. Since the ad could be viewed as campaign-related, it could therefore be criticized as engaging in personal misconduct.”

Trump could be found abusing his office for putting out this ad, which could be sanctioned with impeachment, Gerhardt said. If the ad is read as a signal that Trump is weighing a third term, that would run into the 22nd Amendment — which Gerhardt says Trump has no legitimate way around.

“The law is clear that Trump may not run for, or serve, a third term as president,” Gerhardt said. “While Trump has defied many laws, he is not going to find any legitimate way to avoid compliance with the Constitution.”