The controversial meme that Donald Trump tweeted and deleted on Saturday featuring Hillary Clinton and a star of David may have originated from an online message board for neo-Nazis.
Mic reported that the image — depicting Hillary Clinton with a star-shaped sign that read “Most Corrupt Candidate Ever!” — was posted on /pol/, a message board for neo-Nazis and anti-Semites, a week and a half before Trump used it in his tweet.
In the thread, the image was uploaded with the filename hILLhISTORY.jpg, the lowercase hh being a
The image’s creator — who goes by the handle FishBoneHead1 — would often tweet anti-Hillary and racist memes. FishBoneHead1 deleted his Twitter account on Sunday.
Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, was widely criticized on Saturday after tweeting the image, quickly drawing fire from the Huffington Post and other outlets for the star of David-shaped sign set against a backdrop of $100 bills.
Trump adviser Roger Stone denied the suggestion that the image was anti-Semitic and called HuffPo’s article “horses—” and saying, “a sheriff badge is the same shape as the Star of David.”
“It’s the same star that sheriff’s departments across the country use all over the place to represent law enforcement,” former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski also argued on CNN. “To read into something that isn’t there is, you know what, again, that is the mainstream media trying to attack Donald Trump for something that really isn’t there.”
Still, Trump seemed to acknowledge the optics of the situation and deleted the initial tweet and then retweeted an almost identical version that replaced the star-shaped sign with a circular one.
It’s still unclear if Trump’s campaign obtained the original image from /pol/, FishBoneHead1 or some other source.
The since-deleted original:
The replacement:
Crooked Hillary — Makes History! #ImWithYou #AmericaFirst pic.twitter.com/PKQhYhMmIX
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 2, 2016