Amy Walter on "Paid For By The U.S. Government" Ads: Does This Violate The Hatch Act? Is It Politically Smart To Do?
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2026/09/28/amy_walter_on_paid_for_by_the_us_government_ads_does_this_violate_the_hatch_act_is_it_politically_smart_to_do.html

PBS NEWSHOUR: NPR's Tamara Keith and Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter join Geoff Bennett to discuss the latest political news, including the U.S. government paying for TV advertisements promoting President Trump.

GEOFF BENNETT, PBS NEWSHOUR: With just five weeks before the midterm elections, political advertising and messaging is in the spotlight in key races.

For more, we turn to our Politics Monday duo. That's Amy Walter of The Cook Political Report With Amy Walter, and Tamara Keith of NPR, who joins us today from Nevada.

It's always great to see you both.

So let's start with these new White House TV ads. There was a 30-second spot featuring President Trump. He's warning about the deep state, globalists, and Marxists, and he says this is the final battle -- or, rather, there's a voice that says this. And this was aired during the NFL games this past weekend.

Now, this video, which we just saw, originated as Trump campaign material, but now there's a tag at the end that says, "Paid for by the U.S. government." We can take another look at that video if we still have it.

Now, the White House calls this a public service announcement, not a political ad, although it's clearly a political ad. And, Amy, the White House also says -- there's the video. The White House says that there is a precedent for this, that there were the COVID vaccine ads under Biden, the Affordable Care Act promotion under Obama.

Still, it's not exactly an apples-to-apples comparison.

AMY WALTER, COOK POLITICAL REPORT: Yes. I mean, this is clearly -- and, in fact, those stills that you just showed there came from his 2024 political ad that was paid for by his political campaign. So the actual images are the exact same from a paid political ad.

I think there are two issues here, one is, yes, does this violate the Hatch Act, which it clearly looks like it does, which says that you cannot use government funding or government time to pay for political advertising. The next piece, is it politically smart to do?

Well, why would the White House do something like this at a time when, one, most Republicans right now in competitive races are doing all they can to separate themselves from the president, not -- they would like this election to be less about Donald Trump and more about their individual races, and then he literally is looming over these this election with these ads. So that's piece number one about it.

And then the second is, what folks really would like to see the president talk about is the stuff that they care about the most, the cost of living. And nowhere does this really address the real concerns that Americans are having about that.

So, again, it feels a little bit like where we sit with the president going after the news organizations like AP and CNN. There is this sort of idea that the president wants to be the center of the conversation, that especially an aggrieved Donald Trump likes to be the center of conversation to rally his troops behind him.

But, at this point, what we're hearing at least from Republicans who are running campaigns right now and are in tight campaigns, they would like to not have the president as in the spotlight in this way.