Thread: Watch Donald Trump's First Campaign Television Ad

Why Donald Trump's First Campaign Ad Is So Striking
Jan 4 2016, 2:23 pm ET
by Perry Bacon Jr.

Candidates, particularly in their first television commercials of a campaign, often appear with their families or talk about loved ones, as Hillary Clinton did with an ad months ago that featured the candidate raving about her late mother, Dorothy.

Other hopefuls focus on their personal backgrounds, emphasizing their rises to influence and the legislation they passed along the way, as Ohio Gov. John Kasich did with a recent ad that described his rags-to-riches story. And the ads are often positive and on non-controversial issues, like the candidate's work helping military veterans.

Donald Trump's first commercial, with its emphasis on his plans to ban Muslims from entering the United States and to build a border wall, is striking in how it breaks from these patterns. Trump is not trying to campaign as the famous billionaire from "The Apprentice" or the polite businessman who has a brief cameo in the film "Home Alone 2." His commercial is not about his success career in real estate. His children and wife don't appear alongside him.
Donald Trump releases his first TV ad, pushes 'all the buttons' 2:24

The ad includes pictures of the villains Trump harps on while campaigning: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton Islamic terrorists and illegal immigrants. The text in the commercial lists Trump's very controversial policy ideas.

The ad should remove any doubt about Trump's intentions to win the GOP nomination by appealing to voters who are deeply concerned about terrorism and illegal immigration, and favor very aggressive ideas that are opposed by most Democrats and many Republicans.

And by airing this ad first, it suggests Trump believes his primary appeal to voters is through these controversial stances.

There is some debate among political observers about why Trump leads in many polls. Some, mostly notably the data expert Nate Silver, argue Trump is a famous person who is getting disproportionate coverage in the press and that, more than deep support for his policy positions, explains Trump's lead in the polls. Others argue Trump is tapping into deep anxiety about economic conditions in the U.S., where millions of Americans have had stagnant wages for decades. A third theory is Trump appeals to white, non-college educated voters because of his policy ideas, blunt rhetoric and refusal to bow to political conventions.

Trump, through this ad, is betting on the third theory. The mogul could have taken a different course. He has stayed atop of polls while making controversial comments on Muslims and immigrants. But it is not entirely clear this is why he is winning.

Trump could have opted not to emphasize those positions even more, since it's likely most Republican voters have already heard them. He could have used his first ad to emphasize his business successes, his family or his policy plans on cutting taxes and improving health care for veterans, less controversial issues.

Trump didn't take the safe course. These television ads will reach voters who may not have attended Trump's rallies. And it appears the first thing the mogul wants to tell voters about himself is that he wants to keep out Muslims and illegal immigrants.

http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016...riking-n489916

Posted By Steve Guest
On 4:43 PM 01/04/2016 In | No Comments

After PolitiFact found that Donald Trump’s first television advertisement uses footage of immigrants pouring over the Morocco-Spain border instead of the U.S.-Mexico border, the Trump campaign told NBC News that it chose the footage deliberately.

Monday, Trump released his first TV ad of the 2016 cycle that included a narrator saying Trump will “stop illegal immigration by building a wall on our southern border that Mexico will pay for” while showing footage of people running across a border.

When questioned about the discrepancy, Trump’s campaign manager Corey Lewandowski told NBC reporter Katy Tur, “No shit it’s not the Mexican border but that’s what our country is going to look like if we don’t do anything.” Lewandowski later added, “If we don’t build a wall.”

In a statement provided by Trump campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks, the Trump campaign stood by the ad, insisting, “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. The biased mainstream media doesn’t understand, but Americans who want to protect their jobs and their families do.”

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


It was "intentional". New official statement from the Trump campaign: pic.twitter.com/uPzaG5zL2l

— Katy Tur (@KatyTurNBC) January 4, 2016


http://dailycaller.com/2016/01/04/tr...mexico-border/

Donald Trump's first TV ad shows migrants 'at the southern border,' but they're actually in Morocco

By C. Eugene Emery Jr., Louis Jacobson on Monday, January 4th, 2016 at 2:04 p.m.

Donald Trump releases TV ad
McClatchy DC

We took a closer look at the footage from a new Donald Trump ad.After the Fact
Trump reacts →

In a new television ad -- his campaign’s first -- Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump shows footage of dozens of people swarming over a border fence. But the footage isn’t as it seems.

About halfway through the ad, a narrator says of Trump, "He'll stop illegal immigration by building a wall on our southern border that Mexico will pay for." Video footage shows dozens of people streaming across the border, as if they were ants fleeing an anthill.

The clear suggestion is that the footage is of the "southern border" between the United States and Mexico. But it’s not -- it’s 5,000 miles away, in a small Spanish enclave on the mainland of Morocco.

PolitiFact was able to trace the footage back to the Italian television network RepubblicaTV. OnMay 3, 2014, the network posted footage of Moroccans crossing the border into Melilla, one of two enclaves on the Moroccan coast that are held by Spain. Migrants who cross the border there are essentially entering territory held by a European Union nation, even though they are still on the African continent. (It can also be seen posted by a YouTube user here.)

The RepubblicaTV video is time-stamped May 1, 2014. According to the description posted by the network (and using Google Translate) the video was released by the Interior Ministry in Madrid, showing an "onslaught of hundreds of migrants to the wall that separates the Spanish enclave of Melilla from Morocco. About 800 tried to cross the border on May 1st. Those who failed to escape the control of the Civil Guard were hanging on the barriers for six hours before being rejected."

The 2014 RepubblicaTV video resurfaced a year later, in a July 2015 YouTube post titled, "1,000s of immigrants try to cross the border at once." It makes no reference to the location.

By the time the footage made it into Trump’s ad, both RepubblicaTV’s logo and the 2014 time stamp were no longer visible.

Regardless of Trump’s imagery, the Pew Research Center noted last month that "for the first time since the 1940s, more immigrants from Mexico are leaving the U.S. than coming into the country. The shift is due to several reasons, including slow economic recovery after the Great Recession that may have made the U.S. less attractive, as well as stricter enforcement of U.S. immigration laws, particularly at the border."

Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks said she did not know the source of the video included in the ad and that she doesn't speak for the video production company.

Our ruling
Trump’s television ad purports to show Mexicans swarming over "our southern border." However, the footage used to support this point actually shows African migrants streaming over a border fence between Morocco and the Spanish enclave of Melilla, more than 5,000 miles away. We rate the claim Pants on Fire.

After the Fact

Trump campaign responds to TV ad showing Morocco, not Mexico: 'This was 1,000 percent on purpose'

Added on Jan. 4, 2016, 4:14 p.m.
After we published our fact-check, the Trump campaign released a statement to the media:

"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. The biased mainstream media doesn't understand, but Americans who want to protect their jobs and families do."

NBC News reported that Trump campaign manager put it more colorfully: "Asked about the video, Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski told NBC News, ‘No sh-- it's not the Mexican border, but that's what our country is going to look like. This was 1,000 percent on purpose.’ "

The ad makes no such clarification, and we believe that most viewers -- in the context of the ad and Trump's past statements -- would conclude that it shows the U.S.-Mexico border, not a border in Africa. Our rating of Pants on Fire stands.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-me...nts-southern-/

Those people at that politifact website are morons.

When you're Donald Trump and PolitiFact doesn't like your ad footage, it's a good thing. I guess PolitiFact is upset that the ad showed Muslims invading Spain? The Moors of Morroco occupied the Iberian (Christian Spanish Peninsula) for over 800 years which given what's going on Europe is a good point to show in an ad on stopping Muslimism. Plus Trump got a great deal more free publicity from the ad by doing so.

Originally Posted by patbrunz

Those people at that politifact website are morons.

Yes, they're so frustrated they can't defeat him. I'm sitting here giggling at these morons doing whatever they do to research an ad footage of an invasion and then giving it press so Trump can now talk about it even more than he has and do so for free.

What Donald Trump’s First Television Ad Means for the 2016 Race

By RYAN STRUYK

Jan 4, 2016, 1:31 PM ET

If you’re looking for the “greatest hits” of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, look no further: The Republican front-runner’s first television ad highlights the core positions that have thrust the real estate mogul’s unconventional 2016 bid into the spotlight.

The new 30-second spot unveiled this morning underscores his position to temporarily ban Muslims from entering the United States, as well as his repeated calls to build a wall along the southern border to stop undocumented immigration.

"In terms of its content, if anyone had missed what Trump believed, this ad is telling them," explained Ken Goldstein, a professor at the University of San Francisco and an ABC News consultant. "It’s not trying to tell people other stuff or introduce another face of Donald Trump...but it’s trying to introduce those people who still haven’t heard his messages amplified over the free media."

Trump told CBS' "Face the Nation" Sunday that he's "probably wasting money" with the ad. "I don't think I need the ads but I'm doing them," he said in the interview. "I almost feel guilty.”

Watch Donald Trump's First Campaign Television Ad

Donald Trump Brushes off Al-Shabaab Video That Uses His Words

“Ordinarily politicians use ads to say things they haven’t said in their speeches,” said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, the director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center. “The ad is confirming things that he’s said repeatedly in speeches. What he can’t do in these speeches is attach the visuals.”

Although the ad does contain a brief image of his main Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, the spot avoids any major criticism of Clinton or other Republican candidates.

"The politicians can pretend it’s something else, but Donald Trump calls it radical Islamic terrorism," a voice reads in the ad. "That’s why he’s calling for a temporary shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until we can figure out what’s going on. He’ll quickly cut the head off ISIS and take their oil. And he’ll stop illegal immigration by building a wall on our southern border that Mexico will pay for."

Republican primary voters across the country name national security and foreign policy as two of the most important issues of the 2016 election.

Jamieson says the national news coverage of the ad is more likely to make an impact than the actual ad buy itself. "He’s basically getting another news cycle out of this," she said.

“It’s going to link evocative visuals with a familiar message,” she said. "He’s showing visuals of people presumably crossing the border to his claim about building a wall. If he now continues to say, 'I’m going to build a wall,' he's already gotten all the news he’s gotten. Now he’s attached pictures to it."

Trump has spent very little of his own money on his campaign, although other campaigns and outside groups have spent tens of millions of dollars so far.

"The biggest story has been the dog that hasn’t barked," said Goldstein. "It’s Jan. 4 and this is the first time we’re talking about a Trump ad."

But Goldstein said the ad may shed more light on Trump's strategy than the content of the spot.

"Sometimes we think too much. I think he sort of figured, 'It’s 30 days now [until the Iowa caucuses]. I should probably air an ad,'" Goldstein said. "Let’s see what ad No. 2 is. That will be a big tell on how confident they are or whether they are nervous about other people."

It’s not clear whether this $4 million TV ad was paid by Trump personally or from donors. Trump had raised roughly $4 million from donors since he announced his candidacy. Campaign fundraising numbers from the last three months haven’t yet been released.

The ad has drawn criticism from Democrats. “Donald Trump’s new ad is more of the same disgusting and offensive demagoguery we’ve come to expect from the GOP front-runner,” said Justin Barasky, communications director at the pro-Hillary Clinton Super PAC Priorities USA.

Trump leads most national polls by double-digit margins but remains locked in a close battle with Ted Cruz in the crucial state of Iowa. The real estate mogul plans to drop roughly $1 million per week for the next month for television ads in the Hawkeye State.

He will also drop similar money in New Hampshire, where a victory for his campaign is critical. A Boston Herald/Franklin Pierce University poll in the Granite State in mid-December showed Trump with 26 percent support of state Republicans, compared to 12 percent Marco Rubio and Cruz.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/donal...ry?id=36079887