Trump re-ups controversial Muslim ban and Mexico wall in first campaign ad

Republican frontrunner Donald Trump has released his first, long-promised campaign ad: a spot that touts his controversial proposal to ban Muslims from entering the US “until we can figure out what’s going on”.

The ad then promises Trump will “quickly cut the head off of Isis and take their oil”.

In the 30-second spot, the narrator also declares that Trump will build a southern wall to prevent immigrants from illegally crossing over the US border with Mexico. Over a somber piano melody, the narrator assures listeners that Mexico will pay for the wall.

A spokesperson for the Mexican president, Enrique Peña Nieto, said in August that the country, an important trading partner for the US, would do no such thing.

“Of course it’s false,” Peña Nieto’s spokesman, Eduardo Sánchez, told Bloomberg. “It reflects an enormous ignorance for what Mexico represents, and also the irresponsibility of the candidate who’s saying it.”

The ad shows scores of people, visible only as small black forms from the camera’s distance, scrambling to and over a fence through an arid landscape. The scene is not not actually from the Mexican border, fact-checking site Politifact noted.

Instead, the footage is from the border of Spain and Morocco and shows North African migrants crossing into Spanish territory. The footage aired on the Italian network RepubliccaTV in 2014.

But Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, told NBC News that the juxtaposition of footage was no accident. “No shit it’s not the Mexican border,” Lewandowski said. “But that’s what our country is going to look like. This was 1,000% on purpose.”

Campaign spokesperson Hope Hicks then released a statement: “The use of this footage was intentional and selected to demonstrate the severe impact of an open border and the very real threat Americans face if we do not immediately build a wall and stop illegal immigration.

“The biased main stream [sic] media doesn’t understand, but Americans who want to protect their jobs and their families do.”

President Obama appears in the clip alongside Hillary Clinton, just before the frame changes to show an image of people on stretchers behind photos of the alleged gunman in the San Bernardino shooting.

“He’s calling for a temporary shutdown of Muslims entering the United States, until we can figure out what’s going on,” the narrator says.

Trump’s ad refers to the threat of Islamic extremism, which, like other forms of religious extremism, has existed for millennia.

“He’ll quickly cut the head off of Isis and take their oil,” the ad continues.

Trump first proposed banning Muslims last month at a campaign rally in Charleston, South Carolina. Footage of Trump promoting this proposal was used in a new recruitment film, released this weekend, for Somalia’s al-Shabaab militant group.

Trump told the Washington Post he hopes the ad, and others in production, can sway undecided voters.

“The world is laughing at us, at our stupidity,” Trump said. “It’s got to stop. We’ve got to get smart fast – or else we won’t have a country.”

The ad, which is called Great Again, will start airing in New Hampshire and Iowa on Tuesday. Trump’s campaign said that it plans to spend at least $2m each week to air the ad.

Trump said in a statement: “I am very proud of this ad, I don’t know if I need it, but I don’t want to take any chances because if I win we are going to Make America Great Again.”