Donald Trump’s campaign has released a second statement trying to explain how an image of Hillary Clinton and a graphic resembling the Star of David atop a pile of cash ended up on his Twitter feed.
“The social media graphic used this weekend was not created by the campaign nor was it sourced from an anti-Semitic site. It was lifted from an anti-Hillary Twitter user where countless images appear,” Trump social media director Dan Scavino wrote in a statement released Monday evening and obtained by CBS.
Trump’s initial tweet, sent Saturday, was widely interpreted as anti-Semitic given that it was previously posted on a white supremacist web forum. The Clinton campaign called the image “blatantly anti-Semitic” and “disturbing.”
Scavino said he deleted the tweet soon after it went up because he “would never offend anyone.” The user who posted it, @FishBoneHead1, has taken his account offline but previously shared other anti-Semitic posts about Clinton.
Left: Statement from Trump campaign saying they got star image from Twitter user
Right: Another image from that user pic.twitter.com/Eyvv79CeBr— Sarah Kendzior (@sarahkendzior) July 5, 2016
In a statement released earlier that day, Trump accused Clinton of engaging in “false attacks” to try to paint him as bigoted. Two sentences of the three-sentence statement focused on Clinton’s use of a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state.
The Trump campaign has come under fire for failing to validate the source of their tweets before firing them off before. He has retweeted posts from user @WhiteGenocideTM twice this year.
Read Scavino’s full statement below.
.@DanScavino, Trump’s director of social media, releases this statement saying that he lifted image from Twitter: pic.twitter.com/QHr90a5N3J
— Sopan Deb (@SopanDeb) July 5, 2016
