While everyone else worried about whether or not Ghostbusters II‘s apocalyptic prediction for this year’s Valentine’s Day was true, the presidential campaign of junior Florida Senator Marco Rubio posted a new political ad on its YouTube page. Titled “Morning Again,” the one-minute spot opens with a montage of shots supposedly depicting everyday Americans going about their business in major cities and rural communities. Yet the first shot doesn’t appear to be from the United States at all. In fact, it kind of looks like Canada.
BuzzFeed first reported the offending shot on Monday after noticing what appears to be the iconic lookout tower at Vancouver’s Harbour Centre, located near the top right corner.
After a little bit of digging, the online media outlet found the source on Shutterstock. The ad’s opening seconds of a small boat tugging in front of an otherwise American city’s skyline was, in fact, cutting the Vancouver skyline in a 24-second video titled, “Boats Passing Near City At Sunset.”
To Rubio’s video interns’ credit, Shutterstock’s tagging system had identified “Boats Passing” with “New York,” “San Francisco” and “Vancouver.” Plus, both British Columbia’s largest city and its eastern cousin, Toronto, are often used as stand-ins for New York, Chicago and other major American cities in film and television.
Considering all the crap that Republican presidential rival Ted Cruz has been getting for his Canadian birth, however, BuzzFeed wondered if the shot’s inclusion in the ad was perhaps a veiled jab at the junior senator from Texas. So, they asked Rubio’s campaign about it.
“Ha! Nice catch by BuzzFeed — we hadn’t noticed that. We are not going to make Canada an issue in this election,” a spokesman told BuzzFeed News.
GOP front-runner Donald Trump has yet to tweet about Rubio’s ad snafu. Then again, considering his campaign’s own history with misidentified footage showing up in its commercials, he probably won’t say anything at all. Or he will. He is Trump, after all.
(Via BuzzFeed)