Benghazi movie ad runs during debate

An extended trailer of Michael Bay’s upcoming film dramatizing the events surrounding the 2012 terror attack on a U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya, ran during Tuesday evening’s Republican presidential debate.

The film, “13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi,” features “The Office” star John Krasinski and tells the story of the attack that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

{mosads}The 2012 violence has been a political lightening rod in recent years, with multiple Republicans accusing the Obama administration of misleading the American public about the attack.

The trailer nearly filled an entire commercial block on Tuesday, and likely met a welcoming audience, given the high ratings for GOP debates this year.

Immediately before the trailer, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson accused former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of telling a lie by giving one explanation to her family and another to the American public about the nature of the attack.

“I look at somebody like Hillary Clinton, who sits there and tells her daughter and a government official that ‘No this was a terrorist attack,’ and then tells everybody else it was a video,” Carson said in the debate, which aired on Fox Business Network.

“Where I come from, they call that a lie.”

The forthcoming movie is likely to rekindle the debate over the incident, with Clinton the front-runner for the Democratic nomination.

In one scene in the trailer, a man playing “The Chief” yells for people to “stand down!” Investigations into the Benghazi incident have dismissed allegations that American officials were given any such order.

The movie is scheduled to open on Jan. 15, about three weeks before the Iowa caucuses.

“13 Hours” isn’t the first time a film trailer airing during a GOP debate caught the public’s attention.

In August, many watchers noted that Fox News ran a trailer for the rap group N.W.A’s biopic “Straight Outta Compton,” which some critics contrasted with the Republican candidates’ brief discussion of race.