Outrage mounted Friday over a taxpayer-funded television advertisement glorifying President Donald Trump, with critics describing the 30-second spot as self-aggrandizing propaganda and questioning whether the administration violated federal law restricting the use of public money for partisan communications. The ad—which aired this week…
Page F2From§Eachthe early bird edition — 1 October 2026
Government cuts 300,000 jobs, taxpayers fund $1.7 million ad campaign for the one who survived.
As it ran on the front
The number getting the victory lap this week is 300,000 — federal jobs gone since January 20, 2025, the government trimmed down to what the Washington Examiner calls a "still-bulky" 2.7 million employees. The Examiner frames it as one of the unheralded policy successes of the term, and honestly, fine, that's the argument: smaller payroll, smaller cost, taxpayers come out ahead. That's the whole pitch, and it would be a clean one, if the same administration doing the cutting weren't also doing some fairly expensive advertising.
Here's where I was going to explain that every White House runs public-service spots, that this is routine messaging, standard practice, nothing to — actually, no. Hold on. These aren't evacuation routes or vaccine clinics. The White House has defended them as public-service announcements, the same label past administrations have used for their own campaigns, but the spots in question are a dizzying montage of Donald Trump at rallies, at White House events, at sporting events, alongside military personnel. That is not the same category of announcement. I need to take that comparison back.…
…(cont) The spots ran on Fox News, Newsmax, and CBS. Common Dreams ran the headline "Pure Cult Propaganda" — their characterization of the ad's content and effect, not a line spoken inside it, and I was going to call that overheated, a Friday headline chasing clicks, except two House Democrats then asked federal watchdogs, formally, whether the ads violate the law restricting taxpayer funds from partisan communications. That's not overheated. That's Jamie Raskin and George Whitesides putting it in writing, five weeks before the midterm elections, with public money.
So the leaner-government pitch was supposed to end at 300,000 — fewer salaries, lower cost, a win filed and closed. It doesn't end there. It ends at $1.7 million, the same stretch of weeks, spent putting one man's face on three networks instead. Run the two numbers side by side and the thing getting smaller and the thing getting bought are not the same thing: the workforce shrank, and the advertising for the man who shrank it did not.
“They cut 300,000 jobs and called it discipline, then spent $1.7 million of your money on commercials where the guy who did the cutting admires himself on Fox, Newsmax, and CBS. That's not a smaller government, that's the same government with its staff gutted and its PR budget untouched, five weeks before you vote. The office that used to answer the phone is short-handed; the one buying airtime never missed a payment.”
“300,000 fewer federal workers, that's just good management, that's taxpayers winning — and the ads, those are routine, every White House runs public messaging, that's not — okay, three ads built entirely around him, $1.7 million, that's not what I meant by routine. I'm going to need a second here.”
The receipts
House Democrats say officials may have illegally misused public funds to pay for president’s ‘narcissistic ego trips’ The Trump administration is facing growing questions over whether it illegally used taxpayer money to air television ads promoting Donald Trump five weeks before the US midterm elections . Two congressional Democrats …
The federal government has spent at least $1.7 million to air three different TV ads featuring President Donald Trump in recent days, according to an estimate from AdImpact, which tracks and analyzes political ad spending across television, digital and connected TV channels. Critics say the ads could violate federal propaganda law. The…
The Secret Service diverted $1.17 billion in appropriated funds toward the White House ballroom project Sen. Blumenthal, official release
A leaner federal workforce is a win for taxpayersOne of the most unheralded policy successes of President Donald Trump’s second term has been the purging of many unnecessary federal jobs. The federal government has reduced its workforce by 300,000 jobs since Jan. 20, 2025, bringing it down to a still-bulky 2.7 million employees.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.