The Trump Administration Is Running a Military Recruitment Ad on TV. The Pentagon Says It’s Working.

On Thursday, the United States and Iran traded new air strikes amid rising tensions between the two countries—and only a day after President Donald Trump said he thought their current ceasefire was over. A day earlier, Trump was asked by reporters whether the US and Iran would be regressing to a full-blown military conflict and replied: “I don’t know,” noting that if war occurred, the US would “win it very quickly.” CNBC reported these remarks with the headline: “Trump…adds it’s unclear if war is back on.”

But on TV and at the movies, it’s a different story. Despite evidence to suggest looming global insecurity, a new recruitment ad, in the form of a commercial, is projecting a paternal kind of confidence from Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. In an ad spot titled “Peace Through Strength” (a Reagan-era political phrase that the Trump administration has since adopted as its own), cinematic music soars and an animated eagle flashes as Trump and Hegseth vow, via voice-over, to any American adversaries who may be listening: “We will hunt you down…without mercy.” Trump promises that the US will “lead the world to peace” through “power and might,” adding: “Our friends will respect us, our enemies will fear us, and the whole world will admire the unrivaled greatness of the United States military.”

It’s a message that, in recent weeks, has not-so-quietly been popping up during everything from episodes of reality TV hit Love Island to screenings of Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day. It’s the Pentagon’s first TV recruitment ad since Trump renamed the Department of Defense to the Department of War by executive order in late 2025 (it had originally been called the US Department of War from 1789 until 1947, becoming the Department of Defense in 1949)—and there may be more spots to come, the Pentagon tells Vanity Fair.

When and How Did Trump’s War.gov Ad Launch?

In March, VF Washington correspondent Aidan McLaughlin reported how Trump’s daily media diet of short-form bombing videos helped shape his and Hegseth’s own bombastic military messaging—or, as he called it, their “TikTokification of war.”

By mid-June, proof of that strategy debuted at an appropriately macho venue: Trump’s Freedom 250 UFC fight, staged on the South Lawn of the White House. He posted about the ad on Truth Social, writing: “The Warrior Ethos is BACK at the War Department, and we call on our greatest young Americans to join our Great Fighting (when necessary!) Machine.”

The same day his ad calling for people to join the military was shown at the UFC event, Trump announced the peace deal with Iran that now appears to be in flux amid the president’s apparent disillusionment with the region. “I think it’s over,” Trump told reporters in Türkiye, where he was attending a NATO summit, on Wednesday. “I don’t want to deal with them anymore. They’re scum.”

Who Is Behind Trump’s War.gov Ad?

The commercial had “no specific director” and “was produced entirely in-house by the Department of War using footage from the Services and audio clips of the President and Secretary of War,” a Defense Department official tells Vanity Fair. When asked if any AI was used in the creation of the advertisement, an official denied the use of the technology to VF.

Wartime planning has been an area of focus for the second Trump administration. Last summer the House passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which boosted military spending by some $150 billion for projects including Trump’s space-centered missile defense system known as the Golden Dome. Although this is their first full-fledged TV ad, Trump and Hegseth last year narrated a video that premiered Memorial Day weekend at the Coca-Cola 600. While there, Hegseth delivered the annual State of Freedom address, reiterating his and Trump’s commitment to banishing perceived wokeness from the military, something seen as a distraction from exemplary service. “No more distraction, no more electric tanks, no more gender confusion, no more climate change worship,” Hegseth says in that ad’s voice-over. “We are laser-focused on our mission of warfighting.”

Acting Pentagon press secretary Joel Valdez echoes Trump’s assertion that with its rebranded platform, the military is reaching “records for recruitment.” (Under Trump, the US Army has raised the maximum recruitment age from 35 to 42 and lifted barriers to enlistment for those with only a single conviction for marijuana or drug paraphernalia possession. But data suggests that a mix of factors, including some Biden-era programs, is responsible for any uptick.)

“The Peace Through Strength ad showcases the incredible power of America’s Joint Force, reinforcing that our unmatched military capability is the ultimate guarantor of national security. Inspired by President Trump’s vision of ‘peace through strength,’ the American people are answering the call in droves, driving recruitment in the Military Services to historic new highs as they step up to join the fight,” Valdez tells VF.

Where Is Trump’s War.gov Ad Playing?

Trump and Hegseth’s big-man-on-campus approach to military recruitment has, according to social media posts and online forums like Reddit, infiltrated ad breaks across programming on CNN and Peacock, with the ad also showing before some Regal theater screenings of Disclosure Day and during the UFC White House event, which was shown live in theaters. Warner Bros. Discovery and NBCUniversal, which own the platforms on which the advertisement has reportedly played, did not immediately return Vanity Fair’s requests for comment. It’s worth noting that media companies receive ad buys from a number of private and public sector entities, including government agencies. All advertising buys are subject to standards guidelines and rules, such as ones mandating disclosures about who funded any political ads and stating that those ads “generally will be accepted if there is a factual basis for the claims and such claims fall within the bounds of reasonable debate.”

The ad, which began running in mid-June, has already caused waves in certain markets. “The audience was stunned,” Rev. Chuck Currie, a minister in Portland, Oregon, who saw Trump’s ad with his family before the pre-film trailers at a Regal screening of Disclosure Day, told USA Today, describing the video as “a propaganda piece promoting Trump and the MAGA agenda.” Regal did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the publication, but Currie called the theater chain’s decision to show the video “an endorsement of Donald Trump, his failed war in Iran, and the white Christian nationalism advocated by Secretary Hegseth.” Regal did not immediately return Vanity Fair’s request for comment.

Currie’s multiple posts about the offending ad drew several responses on Facebook from others who claimed to have also seen the advertisement. Elsewhere on the West Coast, Julie Bravo, president and chief marketing officer of Evolved Multi-tainment Management, which runs a half dozen California theaters, said the video had been mistakenly shown at one of the company’s establishments and “was not approved for our preshow programming.” “As soon as we became aware of the issue, we took steps to have it removed,” Bravo said, as reported by USA Today. “We firmly believe that our guests come to the movies to enjoy entertainment and an escape from the issues and divisions of everyday life, and political advertising is not something we intend to present on our screens.”

Will There Be More War.gov Ads?

“A good communication strategy meets the intended audience where they are,” a Defense Department official tells VF in a statement. “We are evaluating the performance from this advertisement to shape future decisions on media buys.”

And while Trump’s overarching military strategy is still vaguely defined to large swaths of America, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles told VF last year that the president was not eager to engage in war. “I think the country is beginning to see that he’s proud to be an agent of peace,” she said. “I think that surprises people. Doesn’t surprise me, but it doesn’t fit with the Donald Trump people think they know.”