PSA: Trump Continues To Commit Crimes

Like many Americans, I was watching college gladiatorial sports on Saturday when a new Donald Trump campaign ad interrupted my nachos and circus. In the ad, Trump promises to rid the country of communists and Marxists—which made me glare at my TV long enough to mumble, “I’m not going anywhere, you piece of shit”—followed by a curious tagline: “Paid for by the U.S. government.”

The line immediately activated my lawyer brain. Federal law prohibits taxpayer dollars from being used for campaign ads and other forms of propaganda. Trump’s ad was a clear violation of this restriction. Moreover, the ad violates the Hatch Act, which bars federal officials from making campaign statements in their official capacity. Nothing about these ads (Trump apparently made three different ones with our tax dollars) is remotely legal, or OK.

And yet, before the game resumed, I knew how the rest of the story would play out. Democrats would demand an “investigation” into this facially obvious violation. Republicans would shrug and either say they hadn’t seen it or that it was no big deal. The Trump administration would offer some limp legal defense that amounted to “but a Black president existed.” Nothing would happen. All the while, the stories highlighting the ad’s illegality would draw more attention to the state propaganda beamed into our eyeballs.

It’s played out pretty much as I anticipated. Popular ethicists like Richard Painter and Norm Eisen have excoriated the administration. Eisen told The New York Times: “The president and his administration have gone from breaking the law to trampling it.” Senator Elizabeth Warren told The Hill: “There should be a full investigation because on its face it appears to be a violation of federal law.” Even the Republican Senate majority leader John Thune pushed back a little, though he had to be careful to still lick Trump’s boot while lightly admonishing his dear leader. Thune said: “It’s a great message, I like the message, but it shouldn’t be paid for by taxpayer dollars.”

For its part, the Trump administration has called the ad a “public service announcement” and likened it to (wait for it) Barack Obama’s ads encouraging people to sign up for the Affordable Care Act. The White House said the ad is about “reminding Americans to love their country and understand what makes it worth defending, at home, at our borders, and abroad.”

Friends, there is no “public service” announced in these ads. There is no program or opportunity Trump is offering me. He’s not reminding me to sign up for anything. He’s not even telling me to meddle in other people’s business, or spy on my Muslim neighbors like those “If you see something, say something” ads. It’s just a straight campaign ad.

Indeed, we know it’s a campaign ad, because it’s like all of Trump’s other campaign ads. It has all the Trump ticks: He’s alone, walking in a dark hallway to ominous music. Think about it this way: The most famous public service announcement that nearly everyone is familiar with is the “The More You Know” series. Those ads are punctuated with a freaking rainbow and a star. They don’t look like a dystopian murder mystery that is apparently the only page in the Trump style guide.

Trump is using taxpayers dollars for illegal state propaganda, and the penalty for that will be… nothing. You could make the argument that this is an impeachable offense for Trump, but at this point you’d have to be a naïve fool to think that the president who has been convicted of 34 felonies will be impeached over this light embezzlement of public funds. If we still had a functional media, the outrage over these ads would reach such a level of distraction that Trump would be compelled to pull them and fire a sacrificial staffer for the offense; indeed, it wasn’t too long ago that Trump fired Kristi Noem ostensibly because she misused taxpayer funds for a personal ad campaign. But Noem is a woman, and Trump is Trump, and Trump never takes personal responsibility for his actions. Most likely, he will continue running these ads for a couple of weeks to prove he does not care about laws, then quietly pull them after enough Republicans beg him to do so because it’s not actually helping them in their campaigns to retain power.

And that will be that. Another brazen illegality, another misappropriation of public funds, and another thing Trump will not be held accountable for.

Nothing will happen, but it’s still important to remember that something should happen. We can’t lose the ability to spot a crime when we see it. Speaking out against state propaganda is the best way to resist it. By spotting it and calling it out for what it is, we remain tethered to reality, no matter how hard the state tries to gaslight us. To quote my favorite line in the entire Star Trek canon: “There are four lights.” Not five. And it is important to shout out the right answer, no matter how many times the government tries to lie to you.

It’s also important to remember the truth, because if the Democrats ever take back power, the laws Trump has broken are among those that will need to be fixed and strengthened. The Hatch Act has been violated so many times by the Trump administration it no longer functionally exists. We’re going to need a new one, with real teeth, that will actually deter public officials from campaigning on the taxpayers’ dime. We’re going to need new FCC laws, updated for a digital streaming age, to ensure equal time for candidates while also defanging the institution so it can’t menace Jimmy Kimmell and Stephen Colbert.

We’re going to need to fix a lot of things before we can eat nachos and watch football in peace.