Donald Trump is defending an ad on border security, saying it’s “irrelevant” that it shows footage of Morocco’s border with a Spanish enclave instead of the U.S. boundary with Mexico.
“I think it’s irrelevant,” the GOP presidential front-runner told host Bill O’Reilly on Fox News’s “The O’Reilly Factor.” “It’s just a display of what our country is going to look like.
{mosads}“We’re like a third-world country,” Trump continued. “We are a dumping ground. That’s what our country is becoming very quickly.
“All we want to do is show what it is going to look like. We could have picked plenty of footage. You can take it any way you want,” he added.
Trump released his first television campaign ad Monday, touting the billionaire’s promise to build a wall along the nation’s boundary with Mexico.
The clip shows footage of dozens of people crossing a fence while a narrator mentions the “southern border” of the U.S.
But according to PolitiFact, the footage actually shows Moroccans crossing into Melilla, one of two enclaves on Morocco’s coast belonging to Spain.
PolitiFact discovered the footage in a report from Repubblica TV, an Italian television network, on May 3, 2014, about 800 migrants who tried to enter Melilla.
The network’s logo and 2014 timestamp were removed in Trump’s ad.
Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks said late Monday that Trump’s ad shows the outcome of letting U.S. border security continue to deteriorate.
“The use of this footage was intentional and selected to demonstrate the severe impact of an open border and the very real threat that Americans face if we do not immediately build a wall and stop illegal immigration,” she said in a statement.
PolitiFact concluded that the ad’s claim that Mexicans are pouring over the “southern border” is “pants on fire.”