Donald Trump's campaign responded to questions about the footage used in the campaign's first television ad with a dose of its usual brashness. When asked by NBC News's Katy Tur why the campaign featured the Moroccan border, rather than Mexico's in the controversial ad, Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski said "No shit."
"No shit its not the Mexican border but thats what our country is going to look like if we don't do anything," Lewandowski said according to a quote tweeted by Tur.
TRUMP CAMPAIGN MNGR: "No shit its not the Mexican border but thats what our country is going to look like if we don't do anything."— Katy Tur (@KatyTurNBC) January 4, 2016
Trump spokesperson Hope Hicks released a statement later, claiming that the use of footage from Morocco was "intentional."
"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." She claimed the "biased main stream media" just "doesn't understand" the decision, but Americans and their families do.
The ad, the campaign's first to air on television, is titled "Great Again" and focuses on Trump's plans to ban Muslims from entering the United States and build a wall on the U.S.-Mexican border.
Morocco, for the not-so-geographically-inclined, is a North African coastal country that shares the Strait of Gibraltar with Spain.
PolitiFact traced the footage back to the Italian television network RepubblicaTV, it said, which shows Moroccan migrants streaming into Melilla, a Spanish enclave. The video originated from the Interior Ministry in Madrid, which filmed the scene on May 1, 2014.
Trump's campaign seems to have scrubbed RepubblicaTV’s logo from its footage, which can be viewed below.
This is, of course, not the first time a politician's campaign has used misleading footage, and it most certainly won't be the last.