- A super PAC supporting Ron DeSantis for president appeared to be targeting President Joe Biden in an ad.
- But the clip of migrants used in the ad was from the Trump era, says the Democratic group American Bridge.
A super PAC supporting Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for president used a Trump-era video clip of migrants crossing a border fence in an ad that appeared to be targeting President Joe Biden.
The US-Mexico border fence footage was taken from a 2018 video distributed by the Associated Press during the presidency of Donald Trump, according to American Bridge, a Democratic opposition research group.
DeSantis announced his candidacy for president on May 24, the same day the PAC, Never Back Down, released the ad on YouTube.
The ad includes the migrant clip with other negative news coverage about inflation and shootings between shots of Biden. A newscaster is heard in the ad saying, a "record-breaking year of border crossings."
Claiming "America has fallen," the ad on YouTube and the group's website portrays DeSantis as "a leader that will save the nation."
The 2018 story accompanying the AP video describes a couple dozen migrants, who were part of a caravan from Central America, scaling the steel border fence to celebrate their arrival. One man dropped to the US side briefly as border agents watched from a distance, and he quickly ran back to the fence, the story says. The CBP says there were 977,509 total apprehensions and inadmissibles at the southwest border that fiscal year.
Migrant land border encounters have, indeed, escalated during Biden's term. The US Customs and Border Protection agency says it has stopped migrants 2.38 million times at the southwest border for the fiscal year ending in September 2022, compared to 1.73 million for the previous fiscal year and 458,088 before that.
A representative from Never Back Down, a super PAC that raises unlimited funds to make independent expenditures, did not respond when asked about the clip.
A DeSantis spokesperson said the PAC is a separate entity from the campaign.
While the ad appears to target Biden, DeSantis will need to get beyond Trump first in the GOP primary. A RealClearPolitics polling average shows Trump is more than 30 percentage points ahead.
DeSantis' and the super PAC were cited in a new complaint by the nonpartisan watchdog group Campaign Legal Center to the Federal Election Commission. The Center alleged that DeSantis and his state PAC violated federal campaign finance laws by reportedly directing or transferring more than $80 million to Never Back Down.