GOP Can’t Seem to Stop Using Russian Stock Vid for Their Promo Ads. Weird…
Is it some sort of secret “Russia We Adore You” Message?
The GOP released their “Commitment to America” (cough, Committing Crimes in America is a better title these days, cough) (committed to ending democracy and dragging women’s rights back to the stone age) …marketing video…and uh…hmm…how to say this….
ALL THE FOOTAGE IS STOCK FOOTAGE OF….RUSSIA!
They couldn’t even get their asses to Texas and film oil rigs, (not that you need to, plenty of stock footage of that out there) But still, DeSantis had no problems getting migrants from Texas to ship to Massachusetts and I know paying a camera crew costs a whole lot less than $600,000 dollars. I mean, I am sure that chick Perla wouldn’t mind helping out again.
“We celebrate the rich heritage of the American story and the vibrancy of the American Dream,” the voice says, over footage of a drilling rig at sunrise.
But this video snippet, an apparent nod to America’s natural resources, wasn’t filmed in America. It’s stock footage created by Serg Grbanoff, a filmmaker based in Russia.
Grbanoff told HuffPost that he filmed this scene in Russia’s Volgograd region.
It’s not the only instance where Grbanoff’s work appears in the GOP’s video celebrating America.
In another scene, a boy is seen smiling and running in a field with a toy airplane. The words “Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” appear on the screen, a reference to the Declaration of Independence.
This clip was also created by Grbanoff, and also filmed in the Volgograd region. Here’s a screenshot of the image in the GOP’s video versus an original shot on Shutterstock’s website:
Seems like all the video clips come from the same filmmaker in Russia via Shutterstock. Now, you can absolutely filter by country, etc in Shutterstock and this is not the only time this has happened either.
Trump did this at least four times during the 2020 election cycle..and not four times in the same ad, but FOUR SEPARATE TIMES! Once can be seen as an error. FOUR TIMES? That seems like a coded message or just really, really, really lazy ad makers who are just going “Oh, that looks good!” Click, download, edit, and done.
Is the footage from Russians that much cheaper on shutter stock or is the entire GOP admitting now that they think Russia is more photogenic than America? Or are they trying to tell Putin, who has thrown money at them for years now through all his oligarchs, thanks so much and this is how we let you know we love you?
GOP in Texas did the same thing with their “spy movie” themed ad, I swear their ads are only designed to appeal to ammosexuals and hardcore nationalists. I mean look at it.
The ad’s theme is “Save Texas” and cloaks the candidates in a deluge of American flags and paraphernalia. However, this America-themed ad cuts to stock footage of a destroyer ship and a helicopter, both of which were created by users abroad. The ship was animated in Russia and the helicopter shot is from Israel.
Why the hell does Texas need saving from equal rights for gays, allowing women to have healthcare, and immigrants? Like seriously, it’s not some war-torn country filled with starving people who are being beaten and raped mercilessly, those are most of the countries the immigrants are from, but hey who’s counting facts these days?
And a Colorado GOP Senate Candidate just used Russian plane footage in an ad about his commitment to the US military. Are they all hiring the same guy on Fiverr to make these ads? And you JUST KNOW that if these were Dem ads the GOP would be all over them calling the Dems Russian sympathizers etc. (RollCall does weird things but the article is legit, just reload your browser if it says “something went wrong)
Colorado Republican Senate candidate Joe O’Dea promises to “support the police and military,” in a television ad that featured footage of a half-dozen planes flying in formation against a backdrop of fluffy, white clouds.
Only, those weren’t American planes. Three experts on military aviation, after viewing the ad, concluded independently that the aircraft used in the ad by a Republican vying to challenge Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet are a mix of Russian-made Sukhoi fighter jets — possibly flying in a Russian military parade.
“100 percent Russian,” Jeremiah Gertler, senior analyst at the Teal Group aerospace consultancy, said in an email.
But here’s the kicker, this article kind of buried the lead…
Other lawmakers have weathered controversies after using stock military images that are easily identifiable to experts but not laypeople. Republican Sens. Jim Risch of Idaho and Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi and Florida Rep. Brian Mast have all recently been caught posting birthday greetings for branches of the American military featuring pictures of vessels that belonged to other countries.
And in every one of the listed messages, they used images of Russian or Chinese planes. Is it that hard to find stock images of American military hardware?
I went to Shutterstock… turns out you can type a search using American Military Planes and TADA!!! Thousands of photos of American Military planes.
Admittedly, a search for Texas Oil Field brings up a lot of images that have no identifying location, but you can search by Texas and do some scrolling to find some, or, and here’s a thought, go pay a local photographer to get some shots or hell, ask the oil companies to give you some shots. It’s not like Big Oil and the GOP aren’t in cahoots anyway.
So…the question remains, are their media teams lazy, or is this all some sort of weird coded message that the GOP is wholly owned by Russia because for this to happen over and over and over again has far exceeded the realm of “oops, my media guys messed up” and into deliberate.
And it’s also veeerry interesting that the Dems never seem to do this. Hmm, maybe because their ads aren’t filled with nationalist tough guy dog whistles designed to appeal to the lizard brain of their core fear-filled “Merika First” demographic?
Or maybe they pay their media people better. Probably both.
