Trump looted border funds for TV ads and refuses to pay them back

By Maya Ellison · Reporting from Detroit · October 6, 2026

Donald Trump diverted millions in border funds for self-promoting TV ads, and his refusal to reimburse taxpayers proves he treats the treasury as a personal campaign fund.

Donald Trump does not see the U.S. Treasury as a public trust. He sees it as a personal piggy bank. For weeks, the president used taxpayer money to buy himself a multi-million dollar ego trip on national television. Now that he has been caught, he claims he will stop. But he is not offering a refund. He is simply stopping the theft because the noise became too loud.

A raid on the border budget

The theft was not an accident. According to cnbc.com, Trump personally instructed his budget director to use taxpayer money for TV ads praising him. On September 19, the Office of Management and Budget shifted $20 million in Customs and Border Protection funds. They moved this money into a category called "One Big Beautiful Bill Commemorative Events."

This was a direct raid on funds meant for border security. Senior leaders at U.S. Customs and Border Protection were cut out of the decision. Instead, the administration handed a $20 million contract to LMD Agency, a firm in Maryland. The purpose was listed as a “national media campaign.”

These were not policy briefings. They were campaign commercials. One ad featured Trump saying “America will never be a communist country” while a chorus sang “love me.” Another combined images of Mount Rushmore with footage of Trump praising a “golden age of America.” NBC News reported that one of these ads was virtually identical to a 2024 Trump campaign ad.

The goal is always to blur the line between the office and the man. In Flint, we know what happens when officials treat public resources like their own. They take what they want, and the people in the zip codes they ignore pay the price.

The lie of the public service announcement

The White House tried to dress this up as "educational." A spokesperson called the ads “public service announcements” to remind Americans to love their country. They even tried to hide behind the ghosts of previous presidents. They cited ads by Barack Obama on healthcare and Joe Biden on vaccines.

That is a dishonest comparison. Explaining a vaccine rollout is government work. Telling the public to "love me" while promising to "rout the fake news media" is propaganda. Senator Maggie Hassan saw through the act. She wrote that the ads appear to run afoul of federal prohibitions against "a general propaganda effort designed to aid a political party or candidates."

Hassan was right. These ads were "clearly wrong and clearly illegal." They ran in the weeks leading up to November's midterm elections. The timing was not a coincidence. It was a calculated use of state power to tilt the scales of an election.

This pattern of using official power for personal political gain is not new. It is exactly what led to the First impeachment of Donald Trump (2019). The mechanism is always the same: the president treats the levers of government as tools for his own survival.

The brand and the billionaire

Trump’s "reversal" on Truth Social is a performance. He claims the "Radical Left" is upset that he used "U.S.A. money" for "positive promotion." He says he will now use his own money and funds from his super PAC, MAGA Inc.

Let us look at the money. According to FEC filings through August 31, MAGA Inc. had $415.8 million in cash on hand. The PAC has spent at least $57 million this election cycle. Trump is not paying for these ads because he is a patriot. He is paying for them now because he has a mountain of donor cash and the public outcry became a liability.

This is a textbook example of Trump's promotion of his own properties. Whether through a $Trump meme coin or political commercials, the mechanism is the same. He uses the prestige and resources of the public office to enrich himself or enhance his own personal brand for private gain. He turns the presidency into a marketing agency for Donald Trump.

He has always treated the public purse as a subsidiary of his own brand. In this case, he simply used the Department of Homeland Security to buy airtime during football games.

The cost of the getaway

The most galling part of this story is the missing refund. AdImpact tracked money spent to air the ads. Al Jazeera reports federal funds were spent. Regardless of the final tally, millions of taxpayer dollars are gone.

The White House has clarified that MAGA Inc. will pay for ads moving forward, but not for those that have already aired. Trump is essentially keeping the loot from the first heist. He is treating $10 million in public funds as a free campaign subsidy.

Republican Senator John Kennedy said no public official should spend public money on private ads for themselves. Senator Thom Tillis likened the move to the tactics of Viktor Orbán. Even his own party knows this is a breach of trust. But a "reversal" that doesn't include a check to the Treasury is not a correction. It is a concession.

Justice requires more than a promise to stop stealing. It requires the money to be returned. The administration looted the budget of a security agency to fund a vanity project. That is not "patriotic." It is a crime against the taxpayer.

Donald Trump and MAGA Inc. will refuse to reimburse the U.S. Treasury for the millions already spent. They will rely on bureaucratic inertia to let the money vanish. This is the only outcome that fits the record. The president has spent his career treating the law as a suggestion and the public treasury as a gift. Unless there is a forced clawback, the American people are simply paying for the privilege of being lied to on their own television screens.

Trump looted border funds for TV ads and refuses to pay them back

A raid on the border budget

The lie of the public service announcement

The brand and the billionaire

The cost of the getaway

Sources