Latest / INSIGHT TODAY / Trump's use of taxpayer money for PERSONAL ADS is so bad even MAGA is calling it out

Transcript

Trump's use of taxpayer money for PERSONAL ADS is so bad even MAGA is calling it out · INSIGHT TODAY

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: I don't think any public official, including President Trump or
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Kristi Noem or John Kennedy, should spend public money on
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: private ads for themselves. Now, the White House sees it differently,
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: but I think there ought to be a rule that
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: you can't, well, there probably is a rule, you can't
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  Speaker 1: spend public money to promote yourself. There is a rule.
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  Speaker 2: That's MAGA Republican Senator Kennedy. The rule is called the
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  Speaker 2: Hatch Act, and Donald Trump violates it more often than
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: he's at his desk before noon. His latest attempts to
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: distract from his rock bottom poll numbers and sky high
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: gas and diesel prices is so corrupt that it's even
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: causing MAGA Republican senators to call them out and say
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  Speaker 2: there should be a rule. Trump weaponizes the power of
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  Speaker 2: the office of the presidency to put out at least
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  Speaker 2: three political ads for himself and by extension, his political
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: party using your money, your taxpayer dollars to the tune
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: of over a million dollars and counting, trying to claim
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  Speaker 2: that Trump and MAGA are somehow putting out these ads
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  Speaker 2: as public service announcements. There's this ad released late last week.
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  Speaker 2: You can see that paid for by the U.S. government
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  Speaker 2: right there on the screen. It claims that Trump would
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  Speaker 2: help America defeat communism. It's coming from a guy who
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  Speaker 2: embraced an actual communist dictator last week, cozying up to
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  Speaker 2: Chinese President Xi Jinping at a state dinner. And then
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  Speaker 2: there's this ad that, again, you paid for, promising to,
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  Speaker 2: and this is real, quote, expel the warmongers from our government.
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  Speaker 2: I guess irony hasn't died inside the West Wing. NBC
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  Speaker 2: News reports this, quote, the ad is nearly identical to
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  Speaker 2: an ad put out by Trump's 2024 presidential campaign. The
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  Speaker 2: repurposed ad now includes, quote, paid for by the U.S. government,
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  Speaker 2: but it excludes the last few seconds of the 2024 ad,
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  Speaker 2: which ends with text reading, join President Trump's fight to
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  Speaker 2: save America and his 2024 campaign logo. The White House
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  Speaker 2: is denying accusations that these ads are including a recycled
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  Speaker 2: ad from an actual presidential campaign run by Donald Trump,
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  Speaker 2: are political ads, saying in a statement, quote, the ad
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  Speaker 2: is educational and unapologetically patriotic. I want to bring in,
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  Speaker 2: it's an actual campaign ad. I want to bring in
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  Speaker 2: political analyst, former Senator Claire McCaskill, also joining us here
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  Speaker 2: at the table, Princeton University professor, political analyst, Eddie Glott.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, Claire, I'm sorry, this is like Orwellian. It's
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  Speaker 2: an actual campaign ad made by his campaign team. So
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  Speaker 2: it is a campaign ad.
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  Speaker 3: First of all, it tells you two things. One, it
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  Speaker 3: tells you that he is reading polls. Because this this
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  Speaker 3: reflects the reality that he is facing, that his poll
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: numbers are in the tank. They are so bad that
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  Speaker 3: all Republicans can talk about is not if they're going
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  Speaker 3: to lose, but how badly they're going to lose. The
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  Speaker 3: second thing it tells you is what bad political judgment
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  Speaker 3: he has.
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  Speaker 2: Because this ad does not help him.
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  Speaker 3: It would be one thing if this was an amazing
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  Speaker 3: thing that somehow talked about something besides himself that reflected
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  Speaker 3: on some policy he had promoted. But this is just raw, hey,
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  Speaker 3: look at me, aren't I great? And I can do
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  Speaker 3: it all. And by the way, don't pay attention to
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  Speaker 3: the fact that I'm the warmonger. And by the way,
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  Speaker 3: is it really going to make you that mad that
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  Speaker 3: you can't afford to fill your gas tank? But I
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  Speaker 3: can afford to spend your money on trying to make
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  Speaker 3: me look better because I have really bad polling. So
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  Speaker 3: it is fascinating to me that no one in the
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  Speaker 3: White House has the ability to stop this kind of
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  Speaker 3: political malpractice. This ad helps the Democrats. It doesn't hurt them.
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  Speaker 2: All the calls, Eddie, are coming from inside the House.
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  Speaker 2: I played you, Senator Kennedy, because I could play you 5,000 Democrats,
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  Speaker 2: but the calls are now coming from inside the MAGA coalition.
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  Speaker 2: So are the tweets. This is Thomas Massey on Trump's
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  Speaker 2: so-called PSA.
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  Speaker 4: Quote, don't worry.
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  Speaker 2: Using taxpayer dollars to run ominous campaign ads of the
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  Speaker 2: president has been done before and is completely legal in
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  Speaker 2: banana republics.
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  Speaker 5: Yeah, so I mean, look, this is bizarro world, the
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  Speaker 5: earth too, however we want to describe it. I think
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  Speaker 5: Claire is absolutely right. It's political malpractice. But we have
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  Speaker 5: to ask ourselves the question, right? Is it about politics
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  Speaker 5: in terms of the elections? Or are we looking at
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  Speaker 5: something else that's working at the symbolic level? What is
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  Speaker 5: he trying to present? That is to say, when you
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  Speaker 5: look at the iconography, when you look at this, you
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  Speaker 5: use the word Orwellian. There's a way in which those
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  Speaker 5: images represent his conception of his idea of the executive.
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  Speaker 5: There's a kind of performance. of a certain kind of
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  Speaker 5: unbounded power. I mean, the language, I mean, if people
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  Speaker 5: were paying attention to the particulars, you know, he's lying
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  Speaker 5: about the war. He even uses the language of globalist, right,
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  Speaker 5: in the second act, right? I mean, we know what
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  Speaker 5: that is about, right? But is it about politics? Is
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  Speaker 5: it about what John Kennedy's, Senator Kennedy's interested in or
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  Speaker 5: what Representative Massey's interested in? Or is it a kind
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  Speaker 5: of display of a certain kind of power that should
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  Speaker 5: be read as ominous given how they're positioning themselves to
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  Speaker 5: mess with to deal with, to kind of interrupt the
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  Speaker 5: election itself, if that makes sense.
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  Speaker 2: You're talking about the taking it as the message. I mean,
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  Speaker 2: the iconography is the message. I mean, it is the
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  Speaker 2: propaganda is the point.
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  Speaker 5: This is a display of unfettered power. And It might
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  Speaker 5: not have the political kind of cachet, as Claire's laid out,
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  Speaker 5: but in terms of the way in which he's imagining
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  Speaker 5: the executive, particularly after the slaughter decision, what they're doing
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  Speaker 5: with regards to budgets and the like, it's perfectly consistent.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, Claire, this is where, right, you look
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  Speaker 2: at something like this, it's so offensive to every cell
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  Speaker 2: in the normal body politic, and maybe it's a sign
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  Speaker 2: of how sick the body politic is, right, that that
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  Speaker 2: Massey's like this is normal in a banana republic and
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  Speaker 2: Kennedy's like we should have a law we have tons
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  Speaker 2: of laws Trump doesn't follow them because the Supreme Court
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  Speaker 2: granted him immunity yeah.
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  Speaker 3: Um and it'd be interesting what the Supreme Court would
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  Speaker 3: think of this um is this what they envisioned when
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  Speaker 3: they gave him immunity that he could take taxpayer money
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  Speaker 3: and promote himself in a political context and by the
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  Speaker 3: way the page the White House has put up defending
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  Speaker 3: this is a joke They're trying to compare Uncle Sam
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  Speaker 3: Wants You during the war, the Great War, to this ad,
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  Speaker 3: as if somehow they're the same. You know, the government
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  Speaker 3: paying for ads to try to recruit people during a
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  Speaker 3: time of war is much different than a political office
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  Speaker 3: folder using taxpayer dollars to promote themselves. I mean, Nicole,
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  Speaker 3: the irony of this is it wasn't that long ago
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  Speaker 3: when I would never take a political call in my
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  Speaker 3: Senate office. I couldn't even take a phone call about
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  Speaker 3: politics in a government office. Now he's having the National
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  Speaker 3: Convention Republican on the White House lawn and using taxpayer
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  Speaker 3: dollars to run political ads. And none of the Republicans, oh, yeah, well,
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  Speaker 3: Kennedy was caught on camera. He had to answer it.
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  Speaker 3: But I haven't noticed any of them stepping up to
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  Speaker 3: a microphone and calling a press conference, calling on the
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  Speaker 3: president to stop. They all deserve to lose. None of
• 7:42
  Speaker 3: them have any courage whatsoever for the norms that are
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  Speaker 3: the law.
• 7:47
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