Trump Loves The Troops! (The Russian Troops, Anyway!)
DERP DARNIT FUCK.
Look, we understand, political campaigns are hard, especially if you need to do an ad with stock photos. Like, maybe you are a total fascist like Donald Trump, and you want to do an ad showing how much it's not just racist white people who like you, so you buy a stock photo online of a Black lady and OH DARNIT you find out it's a French lesbian from France who doesn't even vote in America, or maybe it's Stacey Abrams. To be clear, the Trump campaign hasn't done that one yet, but give them time to fuck it up that bad.
What the Trump campaign has done is released an online ad back in July, directed at white racist evangelicals, showing the difference between "public safety" and "chaos & violence." As you might guess, "public safety" was a pic of Trump with some cops, mostly white. Meanwhile "chaos & violence" was some kind of protester kicking the shit out of a cop. Great ad so far, if you are human garbage. Except whoops fuck shit! It was actually a picture of a pro-democracy protester IN UKRAINE in the year of our lord 2014, kicking the shit out of a cop during Ukraine's freedom demonstrations, when the Ukrainian people decided they were tired of these Russia-fellating corrupt authoritarian bastards and were going to do something about.
It was actually on brand for Trump, in a Freudian way. He loves authoritarianism and he wants to sell American democracy to Russia.
Welp, they did it again.
This time they were doing a SUPPORT THE TROOPS ad, because of how everybody knows now that Trump literally hates the troops, especially if they do something he thinks is very stinky like die or get maimed while serving their country. They have to try something to make it look like Donald Trump does not actually hate the troops.
Oh God, look what they did:
Trump campaign ad to "Support our Troops" shows, Russian Mig-29 jets, soldier holding a Russian AK-74 rifle. Apart… https://t.co/7hpcdUgJFg— Alistair Coleman (@Alistair Coleman) 1600166622.0
This is an ad for support the troops, all right! The Russian troops!
Which is, yet again, inadvertently on brand! Trump has taken Russia's side in its illegal war against Ukraine. Sure, he sold those anti-tank missiles to Ukraine, but only so he could extort them into helping him steal the election against Joe Biden. Fuck, he pretty much supports all Russia's wars against the former Soviet satellites. He does everything he can to skullfuck NATO, which totally helps Russian troops! He abandoned our allies the Kurds fighting ISIS in Syria. You're welcome, Russian troops and Vladimir Putin, boss of the Russian troops!
Like, if you're going for honesty, using a stock photo of Russian planes and Russian guns and Russian models playing dress-up as Russian troops troops with the caption "SUPPORT OUR TROOPS" is maybe the most fucking honest thing the Trump campaign has ever said.
Did we mention what day this ad came out? Three guesses, time's up, it was September 11.
Politico confirmed with multiple experts that those are definitely Russian guns and Russian planes and Russian models pretending to be Russian troops, noting that you can buy the pic on Shutterstock, and it doesn't actually say it's a buncha fuckin' Russians. If the Trump campaign had even one halfway competent employee, they might have vetted the pic, but nah.
They also got in touch with the guy who created the pic:
After this story was published, the creator of the image, Arthur Zakirov, confirmed in a Facebook message that it shows a 3D model of a MiG-29, and that the soldiers were Russian models. He said it was a composite photo created five years ago and taken in three different countries showing Russian sky, Greek mountains and French ground.
"This is a completely recreated scene from various photographs of mine," said Zakirov, a 34-year-old oil company analyst and hobbyist photographer based in the Russian city of Perm, about 700 miles east of Moscow.
"Today you hear about the Kremlin's hand in U.S. politics. Tomorrow you are this hand," he joked, saying he found the fact that his photo ended up in a Trump fundraising ad "pretty funny."
Heckuva job, Trump campaign.
Unless this is actually what you were going for, in which case ... heckuva job, you fucking traitors!
[Politico]
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