(Photo illustration by Sarah Rogers/The Bulwark | Photos: Getty, Shutterstock)
IF YOU’VE SPENT MUCH TIME watching the NFL, college football, or Dancing with the Stars over the past week, or if you’re just an average political obsessive, you’ve probably noticed the taxpayer-funded ads from Donald Trump.
They’re billed as “public service announcements,” and one of the spots features excerpts from a speech Trump gave at one of his 2024 campaign rallies. The speech goes like this:
With you at my side, we will demolish the deep state. We will expel the warmongers from our government. We will drive out the globalists. We will cast out the Communists, Marxists, and fascists. We will throw off the sick political class that hates our country. We will rout the fake news media, and we will liberate America from these villains once and for all.
Since the ads began to air, it’s become pretty clear that people hate the idea of the government using taxpayer money to broadcast them. And I mean, they truly hate it.
A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll found that people oppose “using taxpayer funds to pay for election-related television ads featuring the President or members of his cabinet” by a margin of 86–9.
What’s been less clear is whether the ads themselves are effective. After all, voters always claim to hate political ads. Even when campaign commercials are really effective, voters almost never admit to liking them, trusting them, or being influenced by them. And yet they work. But do Trump’s?
To find out, we convened a group of voters from Florida who backed Trump in 2024 but now disapprove of his job performance—the very voters he needs to win back—and showed them the ad. What we saw was a whole new level of revulsion. In fact, we couldn’t even get through the question.
“If you’ve watched the NFL or watched college football, you might’ve seen it around a little bit,” the focus group moderator began. They were immediately interrupted.
“Oh my God,” Ramiro, 58, from Miami interjected, clearly knowing what was coming.
Then we played the ad.
This is what makes The Bulwark different: We conduct focus groups with voters to try to understand what makes them tick—what moves them. We do this in service of getting answers you won’t hear anywhere else. We help you see around corners. If you value that work, please consider supporting us by becoming a Bulwark+ member.