TV Ads Seem To Think Fascism Is Here To Stay – We Better Not Buy It

Also inside: Elon's involvement in Kentucky, Senate campaign spending, and more

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Greetings, FWIW subscribers, I’m Denny Carter, purveyor of the Bad Faith Times newsletter, where I analyze and agonize over the American right’s expert use of bad-faith politics to advance its anti-democracy agenda and what the Democrats should be doing about it.

My background is in journalism and social justice issues, but my day job is as a longtime sportswriter and podcaster, a spreadsheet-loving fantasy football expert since 2012. I can be found posting incessantly on Bluesky at @dennycarter.bsky.social, which I have dubbed “The Official App of Sports.”

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Digital ad spending, by the numbers:

FWIW, U.S. political advertisers spent about $14.2 million on Facebook and Instagram ads last week. Here were the top ten spenders nationwide:

Meta platforms were dominated by left-leaning ad spend last week, most notably with James Talarico and Jon Ossoff’s Senate campaigns combining for over $800K. After a testy week in Texas Senate Primaryland, Talarico’s ads touted him as “Democrats’ best chance to flip Texas’ Senate seat,” while Ossoff’s looked ahead to the general election, highlighting the fact that Republicans have already spent $10M against him in Georgia.

Meanwhile, political advertisers spent nearly $4.2 million on Google and YouTube ads last week. These were the top ten spenders nationwide:

Since Mitch McConnell announced his retirement, three candidates have emerged as frontrunners in the Republican primary to replace him: Rep. Andy Barr (KY-6), former Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, and businessowner Nate Morris. In an unsurprising bout of hypocrisy, despite claiming last year that he would “do a lot less” political spending, one Elon Musk recently proceeded to make what Axios deems the biggest single contribution he has ever given a Senate candidate. Musk donated $10M to the Fight for Kentucky super PAC backing Nate Morris, which spent $207K last week alone propping up who they deem to be Kentucky’s “real Trump guy”.

On X (formerly Twitter), political advertisers in the U.S. have spent $478,944 on ads so far in 2026. According to X’s political ad disclosure, here are the top spenders year to date on the platform where Democratic ad spend continues to dwindle:

…and lastly, on Snapchat, political advertisers in the U.S. have spent $99,295 on ads in 2026. Here are the top spenders year to date:

New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft’s Foundation to Combat Antisemitism rebranded as Blue Square Alliance Against Hate last year, but is continuing to run ads on Snapchat under both names, taking 2 of the top 3 spots on this list.

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Groups like Common Cause, Earthjustice, and Amnesty International are setting themselves up to crush it in 2026 with Civic Shout, and you can too.

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TV Ads Seem To Think Fascism Is Here To Stay – We Better Not Buy It

When the country elected a guy who ran an openly racist, misogynistic 2024 campaign brimming with fascistic messaging about ethnic cleansing and returning the fatherland to its former glory, corporate advertisers swiftly got the message, and their ads over the past 13 months have reflected just that.

In Sunday’s Super Bowl between the New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks, the eye-wateringly expensive TV ads are sure to reflect what corporations still believe is a permanent rightward shift in the American electorate.

The KFC Colonel is a gigachad. Terry Crews is furiously waving giant American flags on a football field. The head of the UFC is telling Ram Truck drivers to never feel shame about being American while a stonefaced George Washington drives a Ram toward invading British troops. And Billy Bob Thornton and Luke Wilson are dressed up as cowboys, shuffling their way around the western frontier, talking about cell phones.

But…are they right? All of these ads are landing at a moment when a majority of the country is expressing its growing disdain toward the authoritarian excesses that have defined this second Trump term, during a game where the entertainment includes sworn foes of MAGA: Bad Bunny and Green Day. And it’s a game the president will not even be attending for fear of being booed out of the building – and perhaps the state.

Advertisements are always the first to register what corporations perceive as political or cultural swings because they want your money whether democracy or fascism is ascendent. It’s all the same for them, as we know from the spate of extremely woke ads that blanketed the American airwaves during the racial justice reckoning of 2020.

At that time, as the nation turned hard against the first failed Trump administration, every major brand had women of color front and center in their TV ads. They had people of various body sizes. They had LGBTQ folks and people of indeterminate origin. Some big companies even platformed transgender folks (shocking!), a once-unthinkable ad strategy. It was sudden, and jarring, and never really felt sincere. Some of these COVID-era ads linger on the airwaves like artifacts from a long-dead past.

The first year of the second Trump administration has seen a 180-degree shift in how products are advertised to the people who elected the country’s first tyrant because eggs were expensive in 2023. Everything on your TV is hypermasculine. It’s all very much in your face, aggressive and ugly and unyielding, desperate to tap into the zeitgeist that led to the political comeback of an insurrectionist president who had been wildly unpopular throughout his first term in office. These corporations, of course, are selling their products to an American public with consumer confidence on par with the hyper-inflationary days of 2021.

Take the KFC ads as an example of how companies perceive our current political moment.

A generation ago, the KFC Colonel was a round-faced jolly old man with a shock of white hair and a smile splashed across his face. The colonel, soft and pudgy, was happy about his chicken. His grandfatherly demeanor was his main appeal as he tried to sell you his crispy fried chicken thighs,breasts, and wings.

Today the KFC colonel is utterly joyless and square-jawed, sweaty and barrel chested, storming into the KFC kitchen and furiously throwing around pots and pans for workers to clean up, smearing at people who take credit for his various fried chicken-based discoveries. He looks hungover, mad, and generally unpleasant. This fascist colonel is meant to appeal to the very people who elected a proudly fascist president. Today’s KFC colonel is certainly a three-time Trump voter. That, for now, is the appeal.

The aforementioned Ram commercial has blared from my TV for months now, starting with a line that would have been rejected from the script of Idiocracy, of course narrated by ardent Trump ally and UFC President Dana White: “Americans, we can do anything we want, except one thing: We just can’t stop being American.”

This ad, has it all: Red, white, and blue smoke pouring from the back of red, white, and blue Ram trucks; red, white, and blue smoke pouring from the tails of fighter jets; monster trucks soaring through the air; a fucking bald eagle; guys with zoomer-style mullets wearing tuxedos; weary grandmothers with tattoo sleeves; an astronaut on the moon planting an American flag; a guy playing the Star Spangled Banner on electric guitar; cowboy boots and cowboy hats and cowboys boots and cowboy hats, and just when you think you couldn’t get enough cowboy boots and hats, there they are: more fucking cowboys boots and hats.

The Ram commercial is brutally clear, leaving no room for interpretation: Fascism is here, baby, so get comfortable and buy our truck and be a goddamn American because that’s the only thing to be now.

Advertisers’ embrace of cowboy culture goes well beyond the sphere of hideously large trucks, of course. We’ve watched over the past year as two Hollywood veterans, Billy Bob Thornton and Luke Wilson, star in dueling cell phone ads in which both guys mosey around in the desolate western expanse, speaking in hackneyed southern accents, pretending to be salt-of-the-earth American men concerned about the quality of your phone calls and internet connection.

These men are alphas, alone in the unconquered west, bemoaning the lies of competing phone companies trying to rip you off. The two are full of colloquialisms. Wilson, for one, can tell the difference between facts and fertilizer, like any alpha male worth his salt. Thornton and Wilson could not be more American if you tattooed the red, white, and blue on their asses.

It all reminds me of the months and years after 9/11, when every part of American culture served as a mirror to the fear and hatred that would manifest into anti-constitutional policy making that was always going to make us vulnerable to a mad king who recognizes no limits to his power.

Today feels specifically like 2003 – the height of post-9/11 hysteria with the launch of the Iraq war. What you’re experiencing today is the supercharged version, fueled by two decades of letting the computer make us go mad. The shift feels as enduring and permanent today as it did back then, when no one in public life could safely critique the Constitution-shredding boy king.

No cultural turn is permanent though. Remember that as you watch the Super Bowl and see ads desperate to tap into the supposedly far-right zeitgeist that brought a traitorous president back to power. Know that one day it won’t be cool to embrace an American fascist aesthetic. And whenever this lurch to the right feels permanent – when the TV is trying to convince you that there’s no going back – remember that support for the president and his odious regime has already tanked.

It’s important that pro-democracy Americans and elected Democrats in particular reject this messaging, and understand that the party and its leaders have the job of shaping and harnessing those opinions, not meekly giving in to ephemeral polling. It’s important to understand that resistance is not, in fact, futile, and that TV advertising does not reflect reality, but only the corporate idea of reality. And when that reality moves on and the backlash arrives, those corporations will do their best to reflect that as well – belatedly, and poorly.

Really, that backlash is already here. We are only a few months removed from the largest nationwide protests in the country’s history, after all. The Midwest is in open revolt against the federal government. And large majorities of the electorate are ready to toss the entire Department of Homeland Security into the sea.

Americans are ready to move on, if recent special elections are any indication. Woke 2.0 is on its way. Don’t worry, the ads will get there eventually as well. Enjoy the game.

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What if you could raise more in 2026?

Groups like Common Cause, Earthjustice, and Amnesty International are setting themselves up to crush it in 2026 with Civic Shout, and you can too.

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Join COURIER and 3.14 Action on March 12 for MAHA & the Midterms: How Trump and RFK Jr.’s Agenda Costs Americans.

This live conversation will examine how political choices are reshaping healthcare access ahead of the midterms. We’ll break down how Trump, RFK Jr., and the broader MAHA agenda are impacting public health, who benefits, and what’s at stake for families across the country.

Featured Speakers include:

• Hank Green, Author + Creator

• Dr. Mary Trump, Psychologist + Author

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• Dr. Vin Gupta, Physician + Medical Analyst

Stay tuned for more speaker announcements.

Don’t miss this conversation. RSVP today!

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