New MAGA Inc. ads comprised of many foreign stock footage clips

The super PAC created by many top allies of former President Donald Trump, MAGA Inc., has been airing political ads containing foreign stock footage from countries ranging from France to Russia.

Earlier this month, reports came out that the super PAC was ramping up funding for key Senate races in states like Arizona, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Georgia. Tens of millions of dollars are being funneled to support these campaigns in the final weeks leading up to Election Day on Nov. 8.

In an ad targeting Arizona candidates Mark Kelly and Katie Hobbs, several clips presented to depict Americans struggling with inflation were taken from Ukrainian and Thai sources on stock footage websites. Shots of men walking in suits and a stressed-out woman next to her daughter were of Thai and Ukrainian origin respectively and were taken from the stock footage website Shutterstock. Ukrainian footage of receipts on a table was taken from the website pond5.

In a separate ad criticizing Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV), rhetoric on American’s dealing with inflation accompanied clips of people taken from European sources. The opening shot of the video discusses high prices while an image of a young woman is shown. The clip of the woman was taken from a French account on Shutterstock. Another part of the ad shows a frustrated woman pumping gas that was taken from a Russian Shutterstock account.

The Ohio ad attacking Senate candidate Tim Ryan (D) featured a video of a grocery store receipt posted on Shutterstock by a Vietnamese user.

During the 2020 election cycle, Trump and his allies utilized similar tactics for their ad campaigns which featured Japanese, Russian, and Belarusian B-roll that was implied to be American.

The new flow of money is a last-minute attempt to combat the strong levels of fundraising Democrats have seen in recent months. The U.S. Senate is currently split evenly at 50-50, and several of the races are labeled as toss-ups.