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Blooming white flowers, rolling green hills, and beautiful mountains towering into the blue distance are all fitting images to represent the great US state of Georgia.
Unfortunately, the stock photo chosen by Donald Trump’s campaign actually showed the eastern European country of the same name.
As first reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, someone on Team Trump confused the two locales when posting an ad on Facebook and Instagram last week.
“ATTENTION GEORGIA: I’m humbly asking you to stop what you’re doing and check your voter registration status. Only a handful of votes will decide this election,” the ad said.
The accompanying photo was taken by Andrew Mayovskyy in Upper Svanetia in northwestern Georgia, according to its Shutterstock listing, and shows the Caucasus Mountains.
The ad itself was targeted specifically at users in Georgia and was viewed between 2,000 and 3,000 times, Facebook’s public ad library shows.
Georgia (the country) is a small independent republic on the shore of the Black Sea between Russia and Turkey, which was controlled by outside empires for hundreds of years until its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.
After attempting to distance itself from Russia it was invaded and partially occupied in 2008, and remains an area of tension between Vladimir Putin’s regime and Nato.
Georgia (the state) was founded by English colonists in 1733, and its name is actually unrelated to Georgia the country, instead being a tribute to King George II of Great Britain.
To confuse matters further, the use of the term “Caucasian” by many Americans to mean “white people” actually does relate to Georgia (the country), which 18th-century race scientists spuriously believed to be the origin point of humanity.
The Independent has reached out to the trump campaign for comment.