At face value, Donald Trump and his team are overseeing the executive branch of the federal government. Dig a little deeper, however, and it appears the president and his operation are simultaneously doing something qualitatively different: They’re putting on a show.
CNN reported about a month ago, for example, that the administration’s deportation sweeps were designed to be “camera-ready” and featured a “made-for-TV look.” Soon after, Axios published a related report that Team Trump’s immigration crackdown includes an emphasis on “choreography, photo ops, wardrobe changes and tough talk.” A White House official said the focus on “the visuals” was deliberate.
The New York Times added that as president’s second term gets underway, “there is already a pronounced trend in how he and his allies are using imagery with an almost imperial aesthetic to project an air of ubiquity, authority and invincibility.” Not only are the administration’s immigration enforcement raids packaged “like mini reality-TV shows — complete with perp walks and even guest stars,” but Trump’s signing ceremonies are also “playlets of theatrical conquest.”
That report was published nearly a week before the White House released what it referred to as an “ASMR” video mocking immigrants being deported.
With this in mind, perhaps it’s not too surprising that the Department of Homeland Security is airing taxpayer-financed ads that celebrate Trump — and the commercials were apparently Trump’s idea. Rolling Stone reported:
The Department of Homeland Security has budgeted up to $200 million to run anti-immigrant ads in the United States and overseas that repeatedly thank President Donald Trump for leading an immigration crackdown. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Friday night that these ads were Trump’s idea, and during the administration’s transition to power, the president asked her to star in ads thanking him “for closing the border.”
On the surface, it’s important to emphasize that the idea behind these kinds of ads is not especially controversial. On the contrary, other recent administrations have taken similar steps, engaging in public information campaigns in the hopes of discouraging those planning to enter the United States illegally.
The problem with this specific ad campaign is what Noem’s DHS included in the message.
According to the version of events that the South Dakota Republican shared at the Conservative Political Action Conference’s Ronald Reagan Dinner on Friday night, Trump told Noem, in reference to the anti-immigration messaging, “We’re not going to let the media tell this story, because the media will never tell the truth. We’re going to run a marketing campaign to make sure the American people know the truth of what you’re doing.”
Noem added that the president told her, “I want you in the ads, and I want your face in the ads … but I want the first ad, I want you to thank me. I want you to thank me for closing the border.”
The DHS secretary, as part of the same story, claims she told Trump, “I said, ‘Yes, sir, I will thank you for closing the border.’ So if you notice, in that ad, we thanked him for closing the border.” A few glaring problems stand out. For one thing, Trump didn’t close the border. For another, the idea that American taxpayers are funding what appear to be propaganda ads celebrating Trump is tough to defend. But in case that weren’t quite enough, let’s also not forget that the Department of Homeland Security is reportedly in the process of firing hundreds of high-level employees, which will come on top of hundreds of more general cuts, which targeted the Federal Emergency Management Agency, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. It’s hard not to wonder how those ousted DHS workers feel about the apparent fact that the department doesn’t have the resources to keep them employed, but it does have the resources to air pro-Trump television ads.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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