Kevin McCarthy debuts new ad praising Trump's election prowess. It uses Russian stock footage.

(Image credit: Screenshot/Twitter/Kevin McCarthy)

Russia seems to loom over just about everything election-related these days.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) unveiled a new ad Monday defending President Trump as he remains the subject of an impeachment investigation and the 2020 general election draws ever closer.

McCarthy's ad portrays Trump as someone who has shown the ability to get elected and achieve results in office, despite having many people try to upend him.

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One criticism Trump hears from his opponents is that he's either willingly or unwittingly a pawn of Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose government is widely believed to have interfered in the 2016 presidential election. It's likely to come up more often as the election approaches, and with that in mind, some eagle-eyed observers, like CNN's Andrew Kaczynski, spotted stock footage in the McCarthy ad that seems to have been shot in Russia. The congressman's team may designate someone to check the location of images going forward. Tim O'Donnell

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Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.