Trump says super PAC will pay for TV ads after backlash over taxpayer funding

President Donald Trump said on Monday that he will stop using taxpayer money to fund television advertisements promoting himself, after the ads sparked bipartisan backlash. Trump said his super PAC, MAGA Inc., will pay for the ads going forward, according to outlets across the political spectrum including the Associated Press, Reuters, the BBC and The Washington Times.

Trump announced the reversal in a statement posted to Truth Social, writing, "The Radical Left is upset with the fact that I am taking Ads, which I consider to be a positive promotion for our Great U.S.A., and paying for them with U.S.A. money," according to Variety, The Hill, Deadline and the Washington Examiner.

Deutsche Welle reported that at least $1.5 million in federal funds had been spent on the TV ads, which critics said resembled campaign-style spots promoting the president. Al Jazeera English reported that the move came after ethics experts criticized three nationally broadcast ads and called for independent investigations, a claim reported only by that outlet.

NBC News reported that the ads had been defended by the White House before Trump's reversal. The Hill and Deutsche Welle noted the backlash came from Democrats and, according to Deutsche Welle and the Washington Examiner, from across the political divide, including some Republicans.

The Guardian reported separately that Trump made the ad announcement as he traveled to Nebraska to campaign for a Republican senator, and that his approval rating had sunk to 32%, though these details were not corroborated by other outlets in the supplied material.

How the coverage differed

Outlets across the spectrum converged on the same core fact: Trump said his super PAC, MAGA Inc., would now pay for the ads instead of taxpayers, following backlash. The Associated Press, The Hindu, the Washington Times and others used nearly identical framing, describing the ads as having "sparked a major backlash" over glorifying the president.

Center and right-leaning outlets such as The Hill, Deadline and the Washington Examiner more frequently quoted Trump's own Truth Social statement describing the ads as "a positive promotion for our Great U.S.A." Left-leaning outlets, including NBC News and The Guardian, placed more emphasis on the White House's prior defense of the ads and on the broader political context, such as Trump's approval ratings and unrelated controversies involving press access.

Deutsche Welle was alone among the supplied center outlets in citing a specific dollar figure, $1.5 million, for federal spending on the ads. Al Jazeera English was the only outlet to report that ethics experts had called for independent investigations into the ads. RedState's headline referenced a "hilarious catch" without detail provided in the supplied material, suggesting a more skeptical or critical framing of Trump's reversal on the right.

The Guardian's live-blog format included additional, unrelated news items — such as a measles outbreak in Pennsylvania and press-access disputes with Politico and CNN — that were not part of the ad story and were not corroborated by other outlets as connected events.

What is still unclear

The supplied material does not specify how much taxpayer money in total was spent on the ads beyond Deutsche Welle's $1.5 million figure, nor does it detail which specific ads or networks were involved. It is also unclear what the "catch" referenced by RedState's headline entails, as no outlet in the supplied material elaborated on it.