Trump’s ad about ‘country going to hell’ features photo from his own administration

In an ad for former President Donald Trump that aired during Sunday’s Eagles game, Trump says the country had “gone to hell” under President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

To illustrate his accusation, the two-minute ad includes an image of a protest in Seattle in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd that took place in 2020 — when Trump was in the White House.

According to Politico, which broke the story, The “Never Quit” spot featured an image from a photo gallery published by KPIC, a CBS affiliate, from a story headlined, “After day of fiery protests, uneasy calm in Seattle.”

In a statement Monday afternoon, a spokesperson for the Trump campaign in Pennsylvania said, “The riot imagery depicted in the ad shows the same radical leftists that embrace the chaos in Kamala’s broken worldview. President Trump will fix our cities, make the nation safe, and stand up to those whose ideology says this abhorrent action is acceptable.”

Ads like Trump’s are troubling to those who hunt misinformation.

“One of the biggest challenges we have is seeing a real image of a different event you’re presenting out of context,” said Matthew Stamm, director of the Multimedia Information and Security Lab at Drexel University’s College of Engineering.

Stamm, who is an expert in detecting visual misinformation, said that misusing a genuine image is “potentially extremely damaging because if you try to authenticate it, it shows up as real,” making it that much more misleading.

This isn’t the first time that Trump blamed Biden for something that had occurred on his own watch.

At a Schnecksville rally in April, Trump denounced the Biden administration for allowing a violent, undocumented immigrant into the United States who would go on to kill a Schuylkill Township woman.

But that man — Danilo Cavalcante, the convicted murderer who escaped a Chester County prison last August, generating fear throughout the area before being recaptured — actually came to the U.S. during the Trump administration.

Cavalcante, 35, who had fled to Puerto Rico in 2018 to evade arrest for murder in his native Brazil, was in Pennsylvania at least by June 27, 2020, nearly seven months before Trump left office, according to a spokesperson for the Chester County District Attorney’s Office.

On that day, Upper Providence Township police issued a warrant for Cavalcante’s arrest for simple assault, harassment, and making terroristic threats against Deborah Brandao, the girlfriend he would later murder in April 2021. Upper Providence Chief of Police U. Mark Freeman confirmed the 2020 warrant request.