The Freedom From Religion Foundation welcomes President Trump’s reversal of plans to use taxpayer dollars to pay for campaign-style advertisements promoting himself. However, this doesn’t excuse his administration for putting public funds toward the effort in the first place.
After mounting criticism, Trump has announced that his super PAC, MAGA Inc., rather than American taxpayers, will pay for the commercials. The U-turn comes after more than $10 million worth of taxpayer-funded ads have already aired since September, according to AdImpact. The advertisements were funded through a $20 million Department of Homeland Security contract using public money.
“If Trump and his political supporters want to spend their own money glorifying him, that is their business,” say FFRF Co-Presidents Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor. “American taxpayers should never have been forced to bankroll this self-serving propaganda. We’re pleased that public pressure forced the president to back down.”
The administration’s plans were especially alarming because among the campaign-style advertisements produced for the effort was a three-minute “God Made Trump” video portraying the president as a divinely chosen leader. The ad, originally created by the pro-Trump Dilley Meme Team, is a risible riff on Paul Harvey’s famous “So God Made a Farmer” speech. It repeatedly, and ludicrously, suggests that Trump was personally created and selected by God for his political role. “I need somebody … to remain strong in faith and know the belief in God and country,” the narrator intones among many other claims, repeatedly concluding: “So God made Trump.”
FFRF strongly objected to the prospect of the federal government using taxpayer money to disseminate such overtly religious political propaganda. The federal government has no business using public resources to elevate the president politically while wrapping him in a mantle of divine authority.
The White House initially defended the advertisements as public service announcements. Trump himself defended using taxpayer money for them just days before reversing course, telling reporters: “I’m not promoting a candidate. I’m not promoting myself because I’m not running for office. I’m promoting the country.”
But, thankfully, Trump has changed course. “I have decided to do the Patriotic Ads, among others, and pay for them myself, and with money I raised for MAGA Inc.,” Trump announced.
FFRF says the reversal is welcome, but it does not erase the serious questions raised by the administration’s original decision or the millions of public dollars reportedly already spent.
“The fact that Trump backed down demonstrates why speaking out against abuses of government power matters,” Gaylor and Barker add. “Taxpayer money belongs to the American people. It is not a political slush fund for presidents to advertise themselves, and it certainly must not be used to promote the notion that our political leaders have been chosen by God.”
FFRF has made repeated warnings concerning the efforts of Trump and his allies to portray his political career as part of a divine plan, including Trump’s claim that God spared him from assassination so that he could return to the presidency. Such rhetoric is a hallmark of Christian nationalism, which seeks to fuse religious identity with political power and portray political leaders and objectives as divinely ordained.
Trump’s turnabout is a welcome development. But American taxpayers never should have had to foot the bill for disinformation.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to defending the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and educating the public on matters relating to nontheism. With approximately 40,000 members, FFRF is the largest association of freethinkers (atheists, agnostics and humanists) in North America. For more information, visit ffrf.org.
