Donald Trump and his run for the presidency has been rife with epic public relations stumbles as the GOP scrambles to position their candidate for the coming election this November. The latest gaffe from the Trump campaign headquarters involved what appeared to be an anti-Semitic dig at Democratic Party rival Hillary Clinton, and there has been quite a bit of backlash as a result.
Trump tweeted an image of Clinton next to a six-pointed star on top of a money pile, and it’s being reported that the photo originated on a white supremacy site. As reported by Mic.com, the imagery first appeared on message board 8Chan’s pol section in where white supremacists and hard Right users gather.
More from Mic.com:
Mic discovered Sunday that Donald Trump’s Twitter account wasn’t the first place the meme appeared. The image was previously featured on 8chan’s /pol/ — an Internet message board for the alt-right, a digital movement of neo-Nazis, anti-Semites and white supremacists newly emboldened by the success of Trump’s rhetoric — as early as June 22, over a week before Trump’s team tweeted it.
Though the thread where the meme was featured no longer exists, you can find it by searching the URL in Archive.is, a “time capsule of the internet” that saves unalterable text and graphic of webpages. Doing so allows you to see the thread on /pol/ as it originally existed.
Of note is the file name of the photo, HillHistory.jpg, potentially a nod to the Neo-Nazi code for “HH,” or “Heil Hitler,” which the alt-right is fond of hiding in plain sight.
The watermark on the lower-left corner of the image leads to a Twitter account that regularly tweets violent, racist memes commenting on the state of geopolitical politics.
Trump has been in defense mode since posting the image and said that his critics are making a big deal over nothing. Trump tweeted that the star image was just that and not meant to be an anti-semitic dig. As reported by Raw Story, Twitter users lampooned the business mogul via sarcastic tweets signifying what the use of the six-point star truly meant.
House Speaker Paul Ryan once again had to criticize his party’s candidate for his almost wanton penchant for insensitive and racist tactics and called Trump’s social media director a “flunky” for the latest slip-up.
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Photo: Twitter
