Trump Campaign Ads, Paid for by the U.S. Government
It's come to this. Observe it. Reflect on the moment.
We are at a hinge point in American history.
Trump is testing us. He is asserting a position in a negotiation. He is running campaign commercials paid for by the government. If we consent to this, then we have made a tacit agreement: Trump is the state.
Here is one of the ads, titled "Final Battle."
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Here is a transcript, but it doesn't communicate the tone of menace in the ad, nor the message that Trump is the warrior/avatar taking charge of the country at a time of peril. Best to watch the ad.
Trump's voice: "This is the final battle with you at my side. We will demolish the deep state, expel the warmongers from our government. We will drive out the globalists. We will cast out the communists, Marxists, and fascists. We will throw off the sick political class that hates our country. We will rout the fake news media, and we will liberate America from these villains once and for all."
Here is another ad. Less menacing. Stranger. Almost pathetic in its frenetic flash of words and images, while background music repeats the phrase "love me, love me." A voice praises Trump: "He is the most resilient person I have ever met, and nothing is going to stop him from fighting so hard for the country he loves."
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There are two ways to evaluate the fact that the Department of Homeland Security diverted $20 million appropriated for other purposes to pay for these ads. The first -- my initial instinct -- is that this is an act of desperation. Trump knows his approval ratings are down, and this is his Hail Mary pass, the throw-everything-against-the-wall-and-hope-something-sticks move. This is the end of the Trump era.
There is a second alternative. Trump is sitting on tens of millions of dollars of his own campaign money, which could have paid for these ads legally, without putting GOP candidates in the position of defending an illegal, indefensible act. Is there any constituency that thinks this is a great use of taxpayer money? In this alternative, Trump knows exactly what he is doing. He is motivated not by thrift or desperation but by a strategy to preserve power if, as expected, the midterms go poorly for him. He is asserting that he is above the law, and doing so flagrantly, setting himself up as the sole legitimate locus of power. The president is the state -- not Congress, not the branches of government sharing power. The tagline "Paid for by the U.S. Government" is the point.
If Congress, conservative media, the courts, and the general public do not rise up to denounce this -- and they probably won't, because they are distracted by the election and it is "only" $20 million -- then a new norm has been adopted by neglectful consent. President Trump can use taxpayer money to create pro-Trump political messaging, i.e., propaganda, and he can do so because Trump's messages are the country's messages. Trump can control the information the public receives; he can write it. Trump is not retreating. He is using the problems he has exacerbated, at home and abroad, to seize new power. Only he can fix things. He is the state.
I suspect history will show the second alternative to be the correct one.
[Note: I have a happier subject for tomorrow. Maybe, coming out of this era, the country will experience a new burst of patriotic renewal. The country is ready for this.]
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