Americans are paying millions for a batch of pro-Trump ads | Margaret Sullivan

The US government is spending millions of taxpayer dollars to get a blatantly partisan message in front of voters as the midterm elections loom.

And while these TV ads aren’t explicitly campaign ads, they might as well be.

They feature Donald Trump as a hero. They try to scare people into thinking that the US could become a communist country. They take shots at the news media and at vaguely described political enemies.

Two Democratic senators, Patty Murray and Chris Murphy, on Tuesday aptly called them “a shockingly corrupt use of taxpayer dollars”.

Their funding, through the Department of Homeland Security, may be illegal, according to experts, and is certainly unethical. They lack any hint of the public service message that the White House claims.

In fact, they closely fit the defining characteristics of propaganda, as described by the government accounting office, including “self-aggrandizement” or “puffery”.

But the agencies or institutions that could do something about them, including the supposedly independent FCC, are eager to do the president’s bidding. Brendan Carr, the FCC chair, is a proud Trump toady, with his thumb on the scale for every Trump project.

Carr has shrugged off questions about the ads. They don’t raise any red flags for him; they are quite normal, and nothing that his agency intends to investigate.

And with both houses of Congress held by Republican majorities, this startling use of taxpayer money will probably go unpunished – at least for now.

“The most immediate check on this kind of behavior is supposed to be and needs to be Congress,” said Donald Sherman, who heads Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics (Crew) in Washington. However, as he told CNN, Congress “has not asserted itself as the first branch of government with the power of the purse to hold the president accountable”. Some Republican members of Congress have questioned the ads, but there’s no groundswell of bipartisan outrage so far.

The Trump administration is responding to the criticism with its usual defiance, even planning to double down in the next few weeks.

“This is just the beginning,” one administration official told Axios.

The argument that these are not political ads is contradicted by an undeniable reality: one of them is a straight-up rerun of a Trump campaign commercial from before the 2024 presidential election. It differs, though, with the addition of an Orwellian coda, “paid for by the US government”.

With its weirdly menacing tone, it shows black-and-white images of Trump walking as he promises to “throw off the sick political class that hates our country” and pledges to “rout out the fake news media”.

Another ad shows images of Trump at public events with a voiceover insisting that “America will never be a communist country,” while the song Love Me plays in the background. (The R&B artist JMSN has said he didn’t authorize this use of his song and has made a cease-and-desist demand.)

Another ad, reported Robert Tait of the Guardian, shows images of Mount Rushmore and has Trump bragging: “The United States of America is the most successful, most accomplished, most exceptional nation ever to exist in human history.”

The White House described that “love me” ad as “educational and unapologetically patriotic”. And, in a statement, it termed the various ads as “public service announcements”.

They are playing to a big-tent crowd that Trump apparently thinks (or hopes) is persuadable. They’ve aired everywhere from pro-football games to Saturday Night Live.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the ads, by last weekend, had aired more than 90 times across various networks – and political leanings – including Fox, Newsmax, MS Now and CBS.

As corrupt as they appear to be, the ads do make a twisted kind of Trumpian sense.

They are probably illegal and have garnered plenty of legitimate criticism. But what’s missing is accountability with actual teeth.

As usual, he’s getting away with it.

But the midterm elections could change that. With Trump’s approval ratings low and voters unhappy with misguided Iran war and soaring costs, Democrats could seize a majority in one or both houses of Congress.

That might mean some restraints on Trump’s never-ending cascade of malfeasance.

It’s no wonder he’s pulling out all the stops to make that nightmare go away.

• Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture