Donald Trump’s campaign team is embracing the fact that the GOP front-runner’s first political ad presents footage of the Moroccan border as an image of the U.S.-Mexican border.
“The use of this footage was intentional and selected to demonstrate the severe impact of an open border and the very real threat Americans face if we do not immediately build a wall and stop illegal immigration,” campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks said in a statement Monday afternoon.
“The mainstream media doesn’t understand, but Americans who want to protect their jobs and their families do,” Hicks added.
Trump’s campaign manager had harsher words for critics after Politifact discovered a clip purported to show the Mexican border was actually footage of the Morocco-Spain border that originated on an Italian television station.
“No s— it’s not the Mexican border,” campaign manager Corey Lewandowski reportedly told NBC’s Katy Tur. “But that’s what our country is going to look like if we don’t do anything.”
The ad, which was already making waves for the fact that it repeats Trump’s controversial proposal to ban Muslims from entering the country, contains a brief aerial shot of migrants racing across a border as a narrator promises Trump will stop illegal immigration along the southern border with a wall that Mexico will fund.
Although the voiceover suggests the footage is of the Mexican border, the video actually shows Moroccan migrants crossing into Melilla, a Spanish enclave.
The entire ad will debut on Iowa and New Hampshire stations Jan. 5 and run at a cost of $2 million per week.
