Over the weekend, gold-tipped mucus plug Donald Trump tweeted a meme of Hillary Clinton that originally appeared on a racist, anti-Semitic message board. This is, to our knowledge, the first offensive tweet Trump has deleted and that his campaign has semi-apologized for. It’s a bold new strategy, acknowledging a fuck-up, and it’s not going all that well for them.
The meme was not what you’d call subtle, featuring a Clinton’s face superimposed on a mountain of cash next to a six-pointed star that bore the words “Most Corrupt Candidate Ever.” Social media director Dan Scavino insists that he took the image from a garden variety, non-Jew-hating “anti-Hillary Twitter user” and that the six-pointed star was a “sheriff’s badge” that one can find in “Microsoft’s shapes.”
The Microsoft-approved “sheriff’s star” was deleted and replaced with a circle. That’s right: Trump deleted a tweet. This is new! He didn’t, for example, delete this endorsement of the sentiments of “WhiteGenocideTM,” or any of the dozens of other white supremacists he’s retweeted:
He also didn’t delete that time our sister site Gawker pranked him into retweeting Mussolini.
Politiwoops shows that when Trump does delete tweets, it’s mostly for typos (“I would NEVER Moch disabled. Shame!”)
And yet here his campaign is, out here, explaining, backtracking, arguing, defending, insisting they uniquely love the Jews. ““There’s no anti-Semitism in Mr. Trump’s body, not one ounce, not one cell,” Scavino told CNN. “Not every six-sided star is a Star of David.”
Trump himself has also gone with that line. It was just a “plain star,” okay?
In truth, this is a dumb controversy, because Trump has done and said many worse things, all the time, constantly, every moment of his life. But this was a particularly stupid one, a classic unforced error. And now, fumbling around trying to defend it, Trump and Co. are giving the story even more air. Trump even issued a statement, one not constrained by 140 characters, trying really hard to make this about Clinton’s email server. It’s barely readable as English but we do see what he was trying to do:
These false attacks by Hillary Clinton trying to link the Star of David with a basic star, often used by sheriffs who deal with criminals and criminal behavior, (showing an inscription that says “Crooked Hillary is the most corrupt candidate ever”) with anti-Semitism is ridiculous. Clinton, through her surrogates, is just trying to divert attention from the dishonest behavior of herself and her husband. The real questions are, why was Bill Clinton meeting secretly with the US Attorney General on her case and where are the 33,000 missing emails and all of the other information missing from her case - Why are there so many lies?
And just this morning, Scavino indignantly pointed out that his wife’s family are Jews, amazing, wonderful Jews:
This is truly beautiful to watch.
Photo via AP