JMSN Tells the White House to Pull Love Me

Lawyers for singer JMSN gave the White House until 5 p.m. on October 1 to stop using his song Love Me in a taxpayer-funded television ad. The 30-second spot, titled The Country He Loves, has been running since September 23 with a U.S. government paid tag and no license from him.

The letter to Chief of Staff Susie Wiles says the White House never sought a synchronization license or a master-use license for the 2023 track, and that Christian Berishaj would have refused if anyone had asked.

Lawyers Gave the White House Until 5 p.m. Thursday

Berishaj performs as JMSN and owns both the musical composition and the sound recording, which he released on his own imprint, White Room Records. That is the whole clearance stack for a television commercial, and the letter says none of it was requested or granted.

Norm Eisen of Democracy Defenders Action signed the notice with lawyers at Ballard Spahr LLP, demanding an immediate end to the ads that use the song. Eisen, a former Obama White House ethics lawyer, posted a short public note the morning the letter became public.

3 little words: cease and desist!

The White House is using JMSN’s music in campaign-style ads w/o permission that they wouldn’t have gotten anyway@DDAction_ @BallardSpahrLLP proud to represent JMSN, demanding immediate end to WH ads using his music -TN https://t.co/CjpzBhSS3U

— Norm Eisen (@NormEisen) September 29, 2026

The filing also argues the ad creates a false endorsement, the kind of implied affiliation that can injure an artist who has spent a career staying off political slates. “To be absolutely clear, JMSN does not want to be viewed as directly or indirectly affiliated with the President or his Administration,” the lawyers wrote.

WHAT THE LETTER DEMANDS

• Stop the song: Cease any use of Love Me and any other JMSN intellectual property in this spot or later promotional material.
• Pull the buy: Withdraw the advertisement from scheduled airings and tell every carrier that ran it to stop.
• Wipe the copies: Remove online versions on Facebook, X, TikTok, and YouTube, including the White House channel.
• Show the books: Send a written accounting of every airing and posting, with date, time, station, market, program, and total media spend.
• Confirm in writing: Deliver that confirmation by 5 p.m. ET on Thursday, October 1.

The lawyers also wrote that the unauthorized use “associates JMSN and the Song with apparent violations of federal laws prohibiting the use of taxpayer dollars for political purposes.” That sentence is the hinge. The copyright claim would exist if a Super PAC had cut the same tape. The extra injury they plead is that the tape was bought with public money.

A Chorus of Love Me Over Fighter Jets

The first spot opened on Fox News and Newsmax on September 23, then moved onto the big four broadcast networks. Trump’s voice says America will never be a communist country, and on-screen text ticks through the largest tax cuts in history, reigniting American manufacturing, and a call to defend law and order.

Under that montage, the mix is Berishaj’s choir-led hook, the two words “love me” repeating while flags, aircraft, and cuts of the president flash by. The last voice is Dana White, the UFC chief, saying, “He is the toughest, most resilient person that I’ve ever met, and nothing was going to stop him from fighting so hard for the country he loves.”

Scored that way, the chorus does a job the White House never had to write. It turns a policy reel into a request. A viewer who only half-listens still hears a government-paid loop asking to be loved, which is why the title of the spot and the title of the song sit so close together.

A White House spokesperson called the ad “educational and unapologetically patriotic” and said, “We should be proud of our country.” The defense is that Trump is not on the November ballot and the script never tells anyone to vote. The paid tag at the end still reads “Paid for by the U.S. Government.”

Border Agency Cash Bought the Airtime

AdImpact, which tracks political and issue television, put airtime for the three Trump spots at least $2.5 million through September 29. That figure is the buy, not the production, and it is already incomplete because the White House booked the flight as a public service announcement, which keeps the usual political-ad disclosures off the public ledger.

THE AIRTIME TALLY

• TV spend: AdImpact estimates at least $2.5 million in airtime for the three ads through September 29.
• Allocation: The Office of Management and Budget sent $20 million to Customs and Border Protection for “OBBBA commemorative events.”
• Volume: AdImpact logged 2,766 airings between September 23 and 29, with the Love Me spot on more than 1,300 of them.
• Football share: About 30 percent of the spend went to NFL and college football windows.

OBBBA is the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the 2025 law the commemorative line is named for. Senators Patty Murray and Chris Murphy told Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin the department had drawn that $20 million from money meant for CBP and called it a corrupt misuse of taxpayer dollars. Russell Vought’s OMB made the allocation earlier in September. The ads showed up on national television days later.

Real public service announcements usually ride on donated time. These did not. They ran in football windows, on Saturday Night Live, on Fox News Sunday, and inside entertainment hours on ABC, CBS, and NBC, including The View, Elsbeth, and The Weakest Link.

THE THREE SPOTS IN THE BUY

The Final Battle is the tell on the PSA claim. Public Citizen wrote that it copies a Trump campaign committee commercial from 2024, down to the black-and-white corridor walk, then swaps the old campaign disclaimer for “Paid for by the U.S. government.” The Love Me spot is the one that dragged an independent catalog into that same paid block.

Stations Now Face a Propaganda Complaint

On September 25, four senior Democratic appropriators, Rosa DeLauro, Patty Murray, Steny Hoyer, and Jack Reed, wrote Wiles and copied OMB Director Vought. They quoted Section 718 of the 2026 spending law, which says no appropriation “shall be used directly or indirectly, including through a private contractor, for publicity or propaganda purposes within the United States not heretofore authorized by Congress.”

If President Trump wants people to love him, he can pay for it himself. The law is not complicated. You cannot use taxpayer dollars for political advertisements.

Rosa DeLauro, Patty Murray, Steny Hoyer, and Jack Reed, letter to Susie Wiles, September 25, 2026

Public Citizen followed with a complaint asking the FCC to intervene, plus filings at the Federal Trade Commission, the Government Accountability Office, and the Office of Special Counsel. Co-presidents Robert Weissman and Lisa Gilbert, with lobbyist Craig Holman, argued the three ads violate 5 U.S.C. §3107 and the Hatch Act, 5 U.S.C. §7324, because they name no government program and exist to boost Trump’s image before the midterms.

The Hatch Act does not bind the president. It does bind staff who produce and place partisan material on government time. Public Citizen says the spots were conceived, produced, and distributed by White House staff, and it has already filed a string of Hatch Act complaints that the Office of Special Counsel has not acted on.

Samuel Bagenstos, a University of Michigan law professor, said the ads aggrandize Trump and that a respectable argument the other way is hard to find. GAO has long grouped illegal publicity into three buckets: self-aggrandizement, covert propaganda, and purely partisan material. The White House answer stays the same. The spots are educational. Trump is not a candidate. There is no call to action.

The Communications Act also cuts a hole in the usual political-ad shield. Stations generally must run ads from legally qualified candidates, even ugly ones. Trump is not on the ballot, so that shield does not apply. Public Citizen warned that a station that knowingly airs illegal, taxpayer-funded partisan material can face a license-renewal challenge. Whether this FCC would ever bring that case is a separate, bleaker question.

The statutory ban on paying publicity experts with appropriated funds is older than this White House, and annual appropriations have restated the publicity-or-propaganda limit since the 1950s. Enforcement still runs through Congress, GAO, and OSC. Republicans control the House and the Senate. That is the practical check, and it has not moved.

Rally Playlists Never Needed This Paperwork

Trump has been told off by musicians for a decade. Neil Young objected the day of the 2015 announcement and later sued over Rockin’ in the Free World. Steven Tyler sent letters over Dream On and Livin’ on the Edge. Rihanna’s lawyers cited a false impression of affiliation. The Rolling Stones leaned on BMI. Pharrell, Phil Collins, Aerosmith, R.E.M., and the Isaac Hayes estate all drew lines around rally PA and social clips.

Those fights often stalled on the same mechanical fact. A rally or a social app can sit inside a blanket performance license. A bought television commercial cannot. It needs a synchronization license for the composition and a separate master-use license for the recording. Berishaj is the sole credited songwriter on Love Me, and White Room Records is his label, so there is no publisher or major to quietly clear it after the fact.

That is why this letter reads sharper than a rally complaint. The White House did not borrow a chorus for a gymnasium. It cut the record into a national flight paid for by CBP and ran it more than 1,300 times in a week. Platform licenses that cover a TikTok sound do not cover that.

Why the Song Was Easy to Grab

Love Me came out in 2023 on the album Soft Spot and later passed 138 million Spotify streams. The second life arrived in late 2025, when TikTok users started parodying Drake’s spoken intros over the choir opening. JMSN’s manager said the record was doing 250,000 streams a day while that joke was hot. It is a soft, churchy hook with two words anyone can sing, which is also what you want if you are laying a patriotic montage in a hurry.

Berishaj has released music as JMSN since the early 2010s, Detroit-raised and based in Los Angeles, and he has made a point of staying off major-label machinery. He said so himself on September 24, a day after the ad appeared, before the lawyers had even sent the Wiles letter.

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“To anybody who has followed my career and knows what I stand for and built my career on, it should go without saying that I would never authorize my music to be used for ANY political agenda or campaign,” he wrote. He added that he had built the career “independently outside of any major system,” that he does not have a publicist, and that “being forced in a situation like this and having to comment is ridiculous.”

The Country He Loves was still on the White House YouTube page as of September 29. The letter does not ask for an apology. It asks for the song off the tape, the tape off the air, the copies off the internet, and a line-by-line account of what public money bought, in writing, by 5 p.m. Eastern on October 1.