MAGA influencers are attacking Republican Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders after a state advertisement promoted welfare to work requirements without leaning on racist tropes targeting Black Americans. The outrage erupted because the ad cast a young white man as the person refusing to work.

Huckabee Sanders, who previously served as President Donald Trump’s press secretary, released the advertisement Monday. It shows a young white man playing video games while the governor describes him as someone who “chose not to work.”

The policy itself follows familiar conservative attacks on government assistance. Yet some voices on the right immediately complained that the fictional offender was white and male.

“This Republican ad calling out welfare leeches uses a young white male named ‘Brad’ as the villain,” complained conservative pundit Matt Walsh.

“Meanwhile, back in reality, women are significantly more likely to be on welfare than men. And black people are astronomically more likely to be on welfare than white people.”

MAGA activist and serial hoaxster Jack Posobiec also objected to the advertisement as an “attack” on white men. Posobiec has been a credentialed journalist under the Trump administration despite his ties to white supremacists.

“This Antiwhite ad should be taken down, the comms team fired, and the Governor’s Office issue an apology. We are 35 days out from an election and they are attacking young White men,” he wrote on X.

James Fishback, a failed Florida gubernatorial candidate who ran a racist campaign, joined the pileup. His response did not merely criticize the selection of the advertisement’s fictional target, but offered a racist stereotype as his preferred alternative.

“White men named Brad don’t typically commit welfare fraud,” he wrote on X. “I’d recommend you start with the baby-momma with a BMW who just got back from her Carnival Cruise.”

Auron MacIntyre, a contributor to conspiracy theorist Glenn Beck’s Blaze Media, likewise framed the advertisement as evidence of hostility toward white men. His complaint turned one fictional character in a government message into a sweeping political grievance.

“The first political party to stop hating young white men will win for a generation,” MacIntyre said.

Huckabee Sanders’ initiative remains firmly rooted in conservative orthodoxy about government assistance. Its message portrays someone who declines to work as undeserving of public support, hardly a departure from the Republican Party’s approach.

At the federal level, Republicans have passed legislation such as the “One Big, Beautiful Bill” while arguing that “able-bodied” people are abusing public programs. Republicans have used that claim to justify cutting off assistance for millions of vulnerable people.

Huckabee Sanders is now carrying that vision of government indifference into state policy. The MAGA criticism is not that she is targeting government assistance, but that her advertisement failed to target the racial group those activists apparently wanted to see vilified.

The available data described in the source cuts against the racist framing. Most recipients of assistance such as food stamps are white, while the majority of the United States population is also white, and many recipients are children.

Conservatives, however, have spent decades promoting claims that minorities are supposedly exploiting public assistance. In more recent years, that propaganda has also targeted minority immigrants as people allegedly scamming the system and living extravagantly.

Former President Ronald Reagan famously promoted the myth of a Black “welfare queen” who supposedly lived in luxury while falsely claiming poverty. The story was not true, but the stereotype became a pillar of conservative rhetoric about government assistance.

Huckabee Sanders has long belonged to the same political movement now attacking her advertisement. This time, however, MAGA influencers are furious because her campaign against public assistance did not come packaged with enough racism for their liking.