Democrats guessed 'up to $20 million'; the White House's own plan starts at $20 million.

As it ran on the front

On September 25 the White House filed its description, not an appropriation, for a new ad: "patriotism isn't partisan." The spot itself — Air Force One, a stadium crowd, Trump at rallies and alongside military personnel — was already running that week on Fox, Newsmax and CBS, and critics called it, more than once, self-aggrandizing propaganda. A legal expert went on the air the same week to explain how the Hatch Act could apply to spending exactly like it. And a watchdog, running the money forward instead of back, found Trump's stated control over a $400 million political fund at MAGA Inc. sitting under the ad buy — control the watchdog called, on its own, a clear-cut violation of campaign finance law.

By September 29 the file had a second column. Senate Republicans, who generally approve of Trump's message — one spot in rotation pledges to "cast out the communists, Marxists and fascists" — told him in public not to pay for it with public money. Public Citizen filed two complaints that week, one asking broadcasters to stop airing the spots, one asking regulators to open an investigation. Congressional Democrats put their own number on the file: up to $20 million, drawn, by the Wall Street Journal's sourcing, from Department of Homeland Security funds, with Customs and Border Protection named as the account. Some called the whole arrangement an impeachable offense.…