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A super PAC backing Ron DeSantis for president appeared to take aim at President Joe Biden in an ad.
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But the clip of migrants used in the ad was from the Trump era, claims the Democratic group American Bridge.
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The ad includes the clip of the migrants with other negative media coverage between Biden’s shots.
A super PAC backing Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for president used a Trump-era video clip showing migrants crossing a border fence in an ad that appeared to be aimed at President Joe Biden.
The footage of the US-Mexico border fence was taken from a 2018 video distributed by The Associated Press during Donald Trump’s presidency, according to American Bridge, a Democratic opposition research group.
DeSantis announced his candidacy for president on May 24, the same day PAC Never Back Down posted the announcement on YouTube.
The ad includes the clip of the migrants along with other negative stories about inflation and shootings between Biden’s shots. A news anchor is heard in the ad saying, “a record year for border crossings.”
Stating that “America has fallen”, the YouTube ad and the band’s website cast DeSantis as “a leader who will save the nation”.
The 2018 story accompanying the AP video describes a few dozen migrants, who were part of a caravan from Central America, climbing the steel border barrier to celebrate their arrival. A man briefly fell on the U.S. side as border guards looked on from a distance, and he quickly ran for the fence, according to the story. CBP says there were 977,509 apprehensions and inadmissibility at the southwest border this fiscal year.
Cross-border encounters with land migrants have indeed intensified during Biden’s tenure. The US Customs and Border Protection agency says it stopped 2.38 million migrants at the southwest border for the fiscal year ending September 2022, compared to 1.73 million the previous fiscal year and 458,088 before that.
A rep for Never Back Down, a super PAC that raises unlimited funds for independent spending, didn’t respond when asked about the clip.
A spokesperson for DeSantis said the PAC is a separate entity from the campaign.
While the ad appears to target Biden, DeSantis will first have to get past Trump in the GOP primary. A RealClearPolitics polling average shows Trump more than 30 percentage points ahead.
DeSantis and the super PAC were named in a new complaint filed by the nonpartisan watchdog group Campaign Legal Center with the Federal Election Commission. The Center alleged that DeSantis and his state PAC violated federal campaign finance laws by directing or transferring more than $80 million to Never Back Down.
Read the original article on Business Insider