Trump's taxpayer-funded ads, and a flydubai captain, travel far from FOX 13 Seattle
The short on millions spent on TV ads promoting the administration gathered more than five hundred comments in its first day, where the station's shorts usually collect about twenty.
FOX 13 SeattleStory of Why this story? The video opened at a pace of 87,350 views a day, 29 times a normal first day on this channel (3,036).
Trump defends using taxpayer money for ads | FOX 13 Seattle
"Trump defends using taxpayer money for ads" is a short national clip from FOX 13 Seattle, the KCPQ newsroom that covers western Washington, and it reached about 87,000 views in its first day. A new short on the channel usually ends its first day in the low thousands.
The story is about money. According to the description, the administration faces growing questions for spending millions of taxpayer dollars on TV ads that promote Trump and his administration, and the title has him defending it. The comments moved even faster than the views. Most of them circle two questions: whether campaign finance law allows this, and who ends up paying. Several viewers set the spending beside their own budgets, from grocery prices to benefits that have been cut.
It was not the only faraway story the station sent out on Saturday. Not far behind came the captain of the flydubai flight to Israel that faced an attempted hijacking, speaking for the first time since he helped stop it. The station's local stories had a quieter day: the Snohomish River closing to all fishing even as anglers report plenty of coho, whale watching from Pier 69, and a melanoma 5K in Seattle.
Earlier in the week, as we reported here, a short on Pete Hegseth's Pentagon firings followed the same path. The channel describes itself through Seattle news, weather, traffic and sports, yet its biggest audiences of the week came for stories from far outside western Washington.
Published on Trari
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- Channel
- FOX 13 Seattle
- Subscribers
- 402,000 ▲ 1,000 this week
- Channel views, last 7 days
- 1,163,040
- Channel views, pace per day
- 104,531 (on a normal day: 136,065)
- Video published
- October 3, 2026
- Video views so far
- 95,877 (less than a day online)
- Video views, pace per day
- 70,188
The numbers
The short's first day ran far ahead of the station's usual, and its comment section ran further ahead still.
💡 Test your knowledge
Coho, the salmon anglers say is running strong on the Snohomish River, is also commonly known by which name?
Coho are widely called silver salmon for their bright silver sides in the ocean, while king is chinook, red is sockeye and pink is the humpy.
