Vice President JD Vance says the taxpayer-funded ads are not partisan and compares them with Obama-era Affordable Care Act ads

On October 5, 2026, a reporter asked Vice President JD Vance whether the public service announcements are a good use of taxpayer dollars, even in a midterm cycle where Republicans have a major cash advantage. As Newsweek reported, he was speaking to reporters before leaving for Alaska. Vance answered that the government has long used tax dollars to tell the public what it is doing, citing Affordable Care Act advertising under the Obama administration, and said he sees nothing "unusual or unorthodox" in it. He said the ads are "not partisan" and that the administration is trying to tell a story about how great the United States is. The same evening, Trump announced that he would pay for the ads with his own money and with money raised for MAGA, Inc.

“go back to the Obama administration with the Affordable Care Act, you have the people's government using tax dollars to advertise about what the government is doing. It's part of actually, I think, living in a constitutional republic. You have to be honest with the American people about what you're doing, about what's going on, and part of that is getting out there and telling the message. So I don't think there's anything unusual or unorthodox about it. I'm sure that some people probably don't like it, but if you look at the message of those advertisements, they're not partisan. They're not, you know, it's not like we're advocating for a particular candidate. We're trying to tell a story, I think, about how great the United States of America is.”