A super PAC tied to former President Donald Trump has spent millions of dollars on ads attacking Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Federal Election Commission records show.
A filing on Friday revealed that Make America Great Again spent $1.5 million on Friday for “placed media: TV” opposing “Ronald Dion DeSantis,” in addition to a similar amount paid last week. The money was paid to Multi Media Services, based in Alexandria, Virginia.
The super PAC is run by top aides to Trump and received money from his campaign coffers, though now that he has an official campaign for president in the 2024 election cycle, it is required to operate independently. The MAGA committee had $54 million on hand at the end of last year.
The attack on the fellow Republican comes even as DeSantis has not declared candidacy for the presidency, and as Trump faces criminal charges from a leftist prosecutor in New York.
The ad faults DeSantis for voting to cut Social Security and Medicare while he was in Congress. “The more you learn about DeSantis, the more you see he just doesn’t share our values,” the ad says.
The ad will run on CNN and Fox News, according to AdImpact, NBC reported.
Although DeSantis now says he would leave those entitlement programs alone, he voted for non-binding resolutions in 2013, 2014, and 2015 while serving in the House that recommended raising the retirement age to 70 and reducing benefits for some. Trump’s own final budget proposal as president included cuts to Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare, the former by $845 billion over the following decade.
Both Medicare and Social Security could be insolvent in the next decade if reforms are not made, according to budget projections. Both parties agree that hard choices will have to be made to avoid the prospect of younger people not being able to get any benefits at all.
On the same day as the first ad buy, the annual Social Security and Medicare Trustees Reports were released, showing that the Hospital Insurance Trust Fund will cease being able to pay full benefits in 2031, and the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund will become insolvent in 2033. Those cliffs would come just a few years after the next president’s term in office, and the options include raising taxes, cutting benefits, or raising the retirement age given increasing life expectancies. If the problem is ignored, the country could hit a devastating financial crisis.