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Can't square this: massive federal spending cuts and $200 million for Homeland Security ads [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-02-19

In the scheme of things, you could contend that $200 million dollars for videos made by our Homeland Security agency warning migrants that "we will find you and deport you" is peanuts compared to the huge federal budget. Yet it is not a good optic and sends an awful message to the millions of Americans being affected by the chaotic firings across many government agencies, the attempts to freeze all Federal spending (which so far isn't succeeding thanks to our courts), and the myriad threats to so many of Trump's own MAGA folks that their incomes and livelihoods don't matter one little bit to Trump or Musk.

I watched a few of these videos (caught part of one on The Meidas Touch from a video they presented on Trump and Musk and not in particular dealing much with this issue, so I went in search of far more information). The one below, which uses the Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, oh she of dog and goat killer fame, is the introduction to the campaign. Here it is--it sent chills down my spine but make of it what you will.

And this is one of the DHS news releases:

"This series of ads will run on radio, broadcast, and digital, in multiple countries and regions in various dialects. Ads will be hyper-targeted, including through social media, text message and digital to reach illegal immigrants in the interior of the United States, as well as internationally." (For attribution: it is contained in the Newsweek piece cited below)

is good: New DHS Ad Campaign Tells Migrants to Self-Deport - Newsweek ; but take your pick. There is no shortage of reporting on this but so far, not much if anything about the utter, in-your-face contradiction inherent in spending over $200 million bucks on a propagandist ad campaign while we are being subjected every damned day with news of this or that government program, thousands of fired federal employees, this budget, or this or that agency being shut down or so hamstrung it may as well be. There are several good articles on this new campaign. This one from Newsweek

Further, not much reporting on all the farmers who now are being told that, oh yeah, you know that money we, your US government, guaranteed for you to improve your land, or crop yields, or buy new equipment? Um, well, nope, you are on your own. At a time when farmers are also facing losing the migrants they require to pick the crops. And losing the business they counted on from USAID.

So, the question is: how do you think it will sit with them to find out that they are being abandoned to handle those loans they took out on the government's guaranty they'd be paid for, and their crops are rotting, and sales they depended upon are no more, when it sinks in that their own government, the one many of them voted for, is happily spending $200 million bucks on videos to scare migrants?

Yes, this is merely another example of FAFO, but how many of these will it take before the sheer weight and enormity of Trump's actions reach the folks who are only now beginning to wake up? Will they at some point comprehend the crazed level of hypocrisy? Will it take more than $200 million? How much? A billion in wasteful spending? Ten billion? Five hundred billion? Or will none of this matter to them? What we will be seeing in the coming days, weeks and months is whether the millions of Americans who misunderstood (one would hope) what they were voting for finally get it that like the rest of us, they are in this sinking ship too.

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[1] Url: https://dailykos.com/stories/2025/2/19/2304769/-Can-t-square-this-massive-federal-spending-cuts-and-200-million-for-Homeland-Security-ads?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

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