Donald Trump responded on Monday to a swirling controversy over an apparently antisemitic tweet featuring Hillary Clinton which he subsequently deleted. 
 
 
 
 Trump comments 'clearly' racist, says Gary Johnson amid antisemitism furor Read more 
 
 Using Twitter again, Trump said: “Dishonest media is trying their absolute best to depict a star in a tweet as the Star of David rather than a Sheriff’s Star, or plain star!” 
 
 Later, he put out a statement on his website blaming Clinton for “false attacks” and said that linking the star with antisemitism was “ridiculous”. 
 
 “Clinton, through her surrogates, is just trying to divert attention from the dishonest behavior of herself and her husband,” the statement said. 
 
 The argument that the star in the original tweet, which had six points and was superimposed over an image of $100 bills, was not a star of David was first used by Trump’s fired campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, in an appearance as a CNN pundit on Sunday. 
 
 
 
 The image in Trump’s original tweet was traced by the news site Mic to a white supremacist message board. Trump’s tweet was deleted on Saturday and replaced by a similar image featuring a circle rather than a star. 
 
 Clinton, whom Trump’s tweets labelled “Most Corrupt Candidate Ever!”, has not commented. On Monday her campaign’s director of Jewish outreach, Sarah Bard, issued a statement. 
 
 “Not only won’t he apologize for it,” Bard said, “he’s peddling lies and blaming others. Trump should be condemning hate, not offering more campaign behavior and rhetoric that engages extremists. The president should be someone who brings Americans together, not someone who sends signals and offers policies of division.” 
 
 
 
 On Sunday, the Libertarian candidate for president, Gary Johnson, told CNN in a wide-ranging conversation: “He has said 100 things that would disqualify anyone else from running for president but it doesn’t seem to affect him. The stuff he’s saying is just incendiary. It’s racist.” 
 
 On Monday, the chief executive the Anti-Defamation League condemned Trump’s tweet as further evidence of extremist sympathies within the Trump campaign. 
 
 
 
 “We’ve been troubled by the tone of this campaign for the past six months,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, national director and CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, also speaking to CNN. 
 
 “The first time something like this happens, like the quote from [in fact attributed to] Mussolini, it’s called a mistake. The second time it happens, like you re-tweet from a white supremacist Twitter account, that’s sloppy. But we’re now at the sixth or seventh time the Trump campaign has invoked bigotry or racism. It’s a pattern that’s perplexing, troubling and wrong.” 
 
 At minimum, said Greenblatt, the deleted tweet raised questions about why a national presidential campaign could be looking at racist websites or antisemitic sections of online sources and using such searches to find content to share with the public. 
 
 
 
 Greenblatt said the tweet was a dog-whistle to neo-Nazis that did not belong in the campaign. 
 
 “These bigoted and prejudicial ideas don’t belong in the conversation,” Greenblatt said. “Donald Trump is the presumptive GOP candidate and we’d like to see him speak out with the same energy he brings to the campaign to call out white supremacists. 
 
 “We want to him to make it clear that bigotry and antisemitism has nothing to do with making America great again.” 
 
 Bard echoed Greenblatt, saying in her statement: “Donald Trump’s use of a blatantly antisemitic image from racist websites to promote his campaign would be disturbing enough, but the fact that it’s a part of a pattern should give voters major cause for concern.” 
 
 A Trump surrogate, Boris Epshteyn, appeared on CNN. He said the ADL was a “notoriously left-leaning Jewish organisation”, adding that a lot of “conservative-leaning Jews … disagreed with the ADL on a lot of its stances”. 
 
 “I will not stand for the idea that a tweet like this was antisemitism,” Epshteyn said. “It was a mistake and it was taken down. End of discussion.” 
 
 On Monday, Dan Scavino, the Trump campaign’s social media director, said the star was not sourced from an antisemitic website, but “lifted from an anti-Hillary Twitter user where countless images appear.” 
 
 Scavino said: “The sheriff’s badge – which is available under Microsoft’s “shapes” - fit with the theme of corrupt Hillary and that is why I selected it. 
 
 “As the Social Media Director for the campaign, I would never offend anyone and therefore chose to remove the image.” 
 
 This not the first time Trump has been linked to antisemitic or white supremacist views. In February, he was asked repeatedly about the Ku Klux Klan and its notorious former grand wizard, David Duke, and refused to immediately disavow Duke’s expressions of enthusiasm for his campaign. When he did disavow Duke, he failed to articulate why the Klan’s white nationalism was wrong. 
 
 Trump’s inconsistency over instances of alleged antisemitism is underlined by his own family ties – his daughter Ivanka converted to Judaism when she married the real estate developer and publisher Jared Kushner in 2009. He is said to be a key adviser to the Trump campaign. 
 
 Trump has also reiterated his support for Israel in several statements and speeches. The prominent Republican donor Sheldon Adelson has proclaimed that Trump is definitely pro-Israel, reportedly vowing to give $100m or more to the Trump campaign. 
 
 On Sunday, Trump tweeted a statement on the death, at 87, of the Holocaust survivor and Nobel peace laureate Elie Wiesel. He wrote: “On Saturday a great man, Elie Wiesel, passed away. The world is a better place because of him and his belief that good can triumph over evil!” 
 
 Donald Trump taps into manufacturing regions to extract Democratic voters Read more 
 
 He also recently condemned the murder of a man who was reportedly killed by a Palestinian gunman while driving with three children. 
 
 “I strongly condemn this attack and call upon the Palestinian leadership to completely end this barbaric behavior,” he said in a statement. “I also call upon President Obama to recognise and condemn each and every terrorist attack against Israeli citizens. This cannot become the ‘new normal’. It has to end.” 
 
 The latest incident may be more accurately attributed to the Trump campaign’s capacity to bring attention on itself even when it would be advantageous to remain silent. 
 
 Trump tweeted and deleted the post on the same day Hillary Clinton was interviewed by FBI agents for three and a half hours about her use of a private email server while serving as secretary of state, and as controversy continued over Bill Clinton’s private meeting with attorney general Loretta Lynch. ||||| Donald Trump tweeted a meme Saturday that used dog-whistle anti-Semitism to announce that his political rival, "Crooked Hillary," had "made history." 
 
 The meme Trump tweeted prominently featured the Star of David, a holy symbol of the Jewish religion that Nazis attempted to pervert by forcing Jews over the age of 6 to sew it onto their clothing during Hitler's reign. 
 
 Emblazoned onto the Star of David in Trump's meme are the words "Most Corrupt Candidate Ever!" 
 
 The star lies atop a giant pile of money. 
 
 Source: Donald Trump's Twitter (since deleted) 
 
 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. 
 
 Other examples of images tweeted by this account include anti-Semitic images of journalists, violent propaganda about Muslims and refugees and racist images of Clinton and black Democrats. 
 
 Following this report, the account from which the watermarked Star of David meme comes began deleting some of its more inflammatory images. The account itself no longer exists as of Sunday afternoon. 
 
 And here is that image of the Jewish journalist with the enlarged nose as it originally appeared on @FishBoneHead1's Twitter: 
 
 Dan Scavino, the Trump Campaign's social media director, issued a statement late Monday saying "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." 
 
 @DanScavino, Trump's director of social media, releases this statement saying that he lifted image from Twitter:pic.twitter.com/QHr90a5N3J 
 
 But rather than laying this controversy to bed, Scavino's explanation for where the Trump team "lifted" the image begs further questioning. When Trump's team sources memes, images and other media from Twitter, the team has a longstanding pattern of always attributing the account from which they found it, no matter how big or small that account may be. 
 
 So faithfully has the Trump account adhered to this practice in the past that it once attributed an image to "WhiteGenocideTM," a user whose Twitter is rife with white nationalist slogans and neo-Nazi imagery. 
 
 "@WhiteGenocideTM: @realDonaldTrump Poor Jeb. I could've sworn I saw him outside Trump Tower the other day! pic.twitter.com/e5uLRubqla" 
 
 Here are several other examples of Trump's image attribution practice in action. 
 
 "@w4djt: "Under a Trump presidency, America will make brilliant new trade deals!" -Donald Trump #dtmag pic.twitter.com/NpYI9i4iSG" 
 
 "@brazosboys: Hillary read "sigh" off the Teleprompter, She's so fake she has to be told how to feel: https://youtu.be/iYUQtxXZPsk @FoxNews 
 
 For contrast, here, again, is the screenshot of the deleted Trump tweet containing the offending of image of Hillary and the Star of David. 
 
 In this particular instance, not only does the Trump account fail to attribute the @FishboneHead1 account — or mention any other Twitter account, for that matter — but whoever superimposed the "Fox News Poll" banner over the lower-left corner of the image completely obscured @FishboneHead1's watermark, thereby further obfuscating the origin of the image. 
 
 If, as Scavino claims, Trump's team really did find the controversial meme from Twitter — and not from /pol/, or another digital repository for racist, xenophobic and violent imagery like it — it is unclear why the Trump campaign would choose this particular instance not to attribute the account from which they found it, rupturing from their longstanding attribution practice just when the campaign would seem to need it most. 
 
 Mic previously reported white supremacists rally on the internet to track and expose what they believe to be a vast anti-white conspiracy, centuries old, in which Jews have paid off politicians and infiltrated the media to undermine Western society from the top down. The Clinton meme Trump tweeted — which previously appeared on perhaps the biggest bastion of the anti-Semitic alt-right — has brought that same hateful paranoia into the mainstream. 
 
 One relationship of particular importance to their "anti-White conspiracy" is that between Jewish reporters and Hillary Clinton, whom they believe to be working in tandem to undermine the Western world, preventing nations like the U.S. from becoming more like their vision of utopia — a nation with racial purity among its core values. 
 
 Source: Twitter 
 
 On Saturday, Trump deleted his original tweet of the meme and in its place uploaded an alteration that replaces the Star of David with a circle. 
 
 Crooked Hillary -- Makes History! #ImWithYou #AmericaFirstpic.twitter.com/PKQhYhMmIX 
 
 Scavino, who runs the Twitter for a presidential candidate who has called Mexicans drug dealers, criminals and rapists and who has repeatedly called for a ban on Muslims from entering the United States, said that he deleted the image because "as the Social Media Director for the campaign, [he] would never offend anyone." 
 
 As lawyer and writer William Hodges pointed out, at least two of the points of the original star are still visible from below the circle on the new image on Trump's twitter. 
 
 He just put the circle on top of the Star of David. You can still see its points.pic.twitter.com/PjNSp38T3X 
 
 In November, Trump retweeted a meme perpetuating the racist lie that black people committed more violent crimes against white people than any other race. That image was found to have originated from a white supremacist's account as well. 
 
 Trump tweeted Monday denying that the star in the photo was a Star of David. 
 
 Dishonest media is trying their absolute best to depict a star in a tweet as the Star of David rather than a Sheriff's Star, or plain star! 
 
 His claim that the star in the offending image is a Sheriff's Star echoes the statement from former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, who argued the previous day on CNN, where Lewandowski now works, that "this is a simple star... the same star that sheriff's departments across the country use all over the place to represent law enforcement." 
 
 Though Trump's tweet on Monday explaining the star used almost the exact same wording as Lewandowski's statement on CNN Sunday, the two currently have no official professional relationship. The Trump campaign ousted Lewandowski as its campaign manager in June. He joined CNN as a political commentator just three days later. 
 
 Later on Monday, the Trump team released yet another denial of the offending image's anti-Semitism, this time arguing that Clinton's team is "trying to divert attention from the dishonest behavior of herself and her husband." 
 
 @realDonaldTrump statement on @HillaryClinton Star of David meme. Original @mic story here: https://mic.com/articles/147711/donald-trump-s-star-of-david-hillary-clinton-meme-was-created-by-white-supremacists#.6Cc5ELBZ4 ...pic.twitter.com/Z0KvKr9MWc 
 
 Hilary Clinton's campaign on Monday responded to the meme, calling it "a blatantly anti-Semetic image from racist websites," and adding that it's "part of a pattern that should give voters major cause for concern." 
 
 @HillaryClinton statement on that Trump tweet from Saturday which featured, then didn't, a six point star:pic.twitter.com/E5Com0Ezam 
 
 In March, Trump asked his supporters in Florida to raise their right hands and pledge their loyalty to him. 
 
 Donald Trump makes members of his Orlando crowd raise their right hands and swear to vote in the primary.pic.twitter.com/EVenRilJrV 
 
 Its vile historical parallel to the Nazi rallies of World War II was as obvious as it was terrifying. 
 
 Let me make this clear to Trump fans: This photo in Florida guarantees he will never be president.pic.twitter.com/dUXh4Bdy22 
 
 Mic has reached out to the Trump campaign to ask why it chose this instance to break routine by not crediting the offending Star of David image to the Twitter account from which they claim to have found it. Mic also inquired as to whether anyone on the campaign altered the image as it had previously appeared on both /pol/ and Twitter in order to obscure @FishboneHead1's watermark in the lower-left corner of the meme. We will update when we hear back. 
 
 July 5, 2016, 1:09 p.m.: This story has been updated. ||||| Photo 
 
 Hillary Clinton’s campaign said on Monday that an image posted by Donald J. Trump on Twitter over the weekend that showed a photo of Mrs. Clinton against a backdrop of $100 bills and a Star of David was “blatantly anti-Semitic.” 
 
 The post accused Mrs. Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, of being the “most corrupt candidate ever.” But critics seized on the episode as the latest example of a longtime pattern of racially charged remarks by Mr. Trump, saying the post was meant to exploit stereotypes against Jewish people. 
 
 In a rebuke on Tuesday, the House speaker, Paul Ryan, said in a radio interview with Charlie Sykes on WTMJ in Milwaukee, according to The Hill website: “Look, anti-Semitic images, they’ve got no place in a presidential campaign. Candidates should know that.” Mr. Ryan added, “I really believe he’s got to clean up how his new media works.” 
 
 The backlash has been swift enough to cause Mr. Trump to do something relatively out of character: He deleted the original post, later sharing an image showing Mrs. Clinton next to a circle instead of the six-point star. 
 
 The news website Mic traced the first image, posted by Mr. Trump on Saturday, to a message board containing anti-Semitic and neo-Nazi imagery, and to Twitter accounts that circulated the images. 
 
 Photo 
 
 Sarah Bard, the Clinton campaign’s director of Jewish outreach, said in a statement: “Donald Trump’s use of a blatantly anti-Semitic image from racist websites to promote his campaign would be disturbing enough, but the fact that it’s a part of a pattern should give voters major cause for concern. Now, not only won’t he apologize for it, he’s peddling lies and blaming others.” 
 
 Advertisement Continue reading the main story 
 
 Though he replaced the image (one observer noted that the tips of the star were still visible in the new post), Mr. Trump took to Twitter on Monday to defend his original decision to post the image with a star. 
 
 “Dishonest media is trying their absolute best to depict a star in a tweet as the Star of David rather than a Sheriff’s Star, or plain star!” he wrote. 
 
 In a statement released on Monday night, Mr. Trump dismissed Mrs. Clinton’s campaign’s criticism as “false” and “ridiculous” and repeated his claim that the image was a “basic star often used by sheriffs who deal with criminals and criminal behavior.” 
 
 But some social media users have disputed Mr. Trump’s suggestion, with one person asking why would he delete a posting if he truly believed it was a sheriff’s star. 
 
 Mr. Trump’s supporters have insisted that the image never contained a Star of David and that people were being too sensitive or politically correct. Corey Lewandowski, Mr. Trump’s former campaign manager, appeared on Sunday on CNN and called the reaction “political correctness run amok.” 
 
 Other Trump supporters said on Twitter that the news media was exploiting a nonissue. They said they supported the theory that those accusing Mr. Trump of anti-Semitism were creating a fictional subtext for the image. 
 
 “The only reason the Trump sheriff star tweet is controversial is because CNN makes it that way,” wrote one supporter of Mr. Trump. 
 
 But white nationalists, including the former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, weighed in with praise for the tweet: 
 
 The Anti-Defamation League has long condemned Mr. Trump’s remarks on immigrants as hate speech and stereotyping. It called on him in 2015 to stop “fomenting hatred.” 
 
 Get the Morning Briefing by Email What you need to know to start your day, delivered to your inbox. Monday – Friday. 
 
 On Monday, Jonathan Greenblatt, the group’s chief executive, said in an interview that Mr. Trump’s handling of the controversy over the posting did not pass muster. “The most appropriate response to the criticisms would be to address them head-on, to apologize, and to articulate firmly and forcefully that bigotry of any sort has no place in this campaign, and that hate has nothing to do with making America great again,” Mr. Greenblatt said. 
 
 Advertisement Continue reading the main story 
 
 Mr. Trump seemed eager on Monday to move beyond the episode. He posted a flurry of messages about his potential choices for a vice-presidential running mate: “The only people who are not interested in being the V.P. pick are the people who have not been asked!” 
 
 He then wrote a post that blamed radical Islam for terrorist attacks. ||||| Cincinnati, Ohio (CNN) Donald Trump, in his first public comments on the controversy, expressed no regrets Wednesday night for tweeting an image widely criticized as anti-Semitic. 
 
 Instead, the presumptive Republican nominee unflinchingly defended the tweet on Saturday targeting Hillary Clinton, saying his staff "shouldn't have" deleted it. Later Wednesday evening, Trump tweeted a picture of a Disney movie sticker book for "Frozen" that featured a six-pointed star. 
 
 "Where is the outrage for this Disney book? Is this the 'Star of David' also? Dishonest media!" Trump tweeted. 
 
 Where is the outrage for this Disney book? Is this the 'Star of David' also? Dishonest media! #Frozen pic.twitter.com/4LJBpSm8xa 
 
 Trump's comments on Wednesday revived a controversy that appeared to be quickly fading under the weight of the news that Hillary Clinton's private emails included classified information, and that she will not face charges. On a day when Clinton's controversies dominated the airwaves, Trump resurrected his own. 
 
 Reached Wednesday night about Trump's latest tweet, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, Jonathan Greenblatt, was baffled. 
 
 He said there was no comparison between the star on the "Frozen" book and "a Jewish star superimposed on money talking about calling a candidate being corrupt." 
 
 "Just so we're clear the image originated with a white supremacist -- not with Disney animators in Burbank," Greenblatt said of Trump's since-deleted tweet. 
 
 Greenblatt said Trump needed to "simply acknowledge that millions of people were offended" and make it clear that anti-Semitic and racist views "don't have a place in the campaign." 
 
 Clinton's campaign also quickly jumped on the opportunity to go back on the attack, tweeting: "Do you want to build a strawman?" 
 
 Do you want to build a strawman? https://t.co/AoeNTJOGpo — Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) July 7, 2016 
 
 On Monday, the Clinton campaign knocked Trump for using a "blatantly anti-Semitic image" and criticized the de facto GOP nominee for refusing to apologize for the tweet. 
 
 At his rally, Trump also repeatedly slammed the media -- including CNN -- for its coverage of the controversy during a rally with thousands of supporters in the battleground state of Ohio and accused the media of having "racist tendencies." 
 
 "Actually they're racially profiling. They're racially profiling. Not us. Why do they bring this up?" Trump said. "These people are sick." 
 
 Critics of Trump's tweet pointed out that the graphic, which featured Clinton and the star on a bed of money with the words "most corrupt candidate ever," evoked common anti-Semitic imagery. 
 
 Then, the Anti-Defamation League, a leading group in the U.S. combating anti-Semitism and bigotry, slammed Trump's use of the image and Greenblatt told CNN he had no doubt the imagery was anti-Semitic and said it was "the classic trope of Jews and money." 
 
 Trump said he was not at all mad at his social media director, Dan Scavino, who posted the tweet. Trump pointed out that Scavino's wife is Jewish. 
 
 Trump also doubled down on his comments about the former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, a human rights abuser whom Trump praised Tuesday night for his efficient killing of terrorists. 
 
 "I don't love Saddam Hussein. I hate Saddam Hussein. But he was damn good at killing terrorists," Trump said Wednesday. 
 
 Trump also praised former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who is being vetted as a potential vice presidential pick and joined him at the rally. 
 
 "And I'm not saying anything, and I'm not telling you it's Newt or anything. But I can tell you, in one form or another, Newt Gingrich is going to be involved with our government, that I can tell you," Trump said. "He's smart, he's tough, he gets it." 
 
 Gingrich, who ran in for president in 2012, spoke before Trump, hammering the Justice Department's decision to not charge Clinton over her use of a private email server while serving as secretary of state. 
 
 "I cannot imagine more vivid proof of corruption," Gingrich said, pointing in particular to former President Bill Clinton's impromptu meeting with U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch on an airport tarmac last week. 
 
 Trump repeatedly referenced Gingrich after taking over the podium. 
 
 "I'm not saying it's Newt, but if it's Newt, nobody is going to be beating him in those debates," Trump said. 
 
 The businessman also plugged the candidacy of a fellow Republican facing a tough re-election fight, urging his supporters at the top of his speech and in closing to "go out and vote for Rob Portman," while slamming the Ohio senator's Democratic rival, former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland. 
 
 Donald Trump swats mosquito: "Speaking of mosquitoes, hello Hillary, how are you doing?" https://t.co/UYpqI3w42L https://t.co/Im4XruT6EY — CNN (@CNN) July 6, 2016 
 
 And in a strange moment, Trump at one point squashed a mosquito buzzing around his podium. 
 
 "I don't like mosquitos!" the billionaire real estate mogul shouted, before adding, "OK, speaking of mosquitoes, hello Hillary, how are you doing?" ||||| Dear Mr. Kushner, 
 
 My name is Dana Schwartz and I’m an entertainment writer at the Observer, the paper owned by your publishing company. On July 2, as I’m sure you’re aware (and have probably been wringing your hands about for the last three days), your father-in-law Donald Trump tweeted out an image of Hillary Clinton in front of raining money with a six-sided star declaring she’s the “Most Corrupt Candidate Ever!” 
 
 I responded to the meme, calling out its blatant anti-Semitic imagery because people can play ignorant, blame the corrupt liberal media for trying to “get” Trump, but it takes only a basic knowledge of world history or an understanding of how symbols work to see a wall of cash, a Star of David, and the accusation of corruption and not see the subtext. 
 
 But deny or play dumb as you might, when I tweeted out my response, my worst fears were realized: his message, whether purposeful or inadvertent, was met with cheers by those to whom that star’s message was certainly clear. Mr. Trump’s tweet was seen as a winking promise to this nation’s worst and most hateful individuals. 
 
 Here are just a tiny sample size of the responses I received: 
 
 This slideshow requires JavaScript. 
 
 A few hours later, Trump deleted the original image and re-tweeted it out, this time with the star crudely covered by a circle (the tips of the star still visible), and a new hashtag: #AmericaFirst. Forgive me if I condescend in any way or explain what you already know, but I’m sure you’ve been busy lately so just a quick refresher: America First was a movement led primarily by White supremacist Charles Lindbergh advocating against American intervention during World War II. The Anti-Defamation League has previously asked that Trump refrain from the slogan due to its overt anti-Semitic implications. 
 
 He and his campaign deny that the image—which had been found, previous to Trump’s tweet, on a white supremacist internet forum—has any Jewish implications at all. Instead of acknowledging the obvious, he and his campaign used it as an opportunity to undermine the free media in the style of the most dangerous regimes in history, and mock those like me, who had been getting strangers on the Internet telling her to put her head in the oven for the past day and a half. 
 
 Here are some of the excuses I’ve seen, both from Trump’s camp and Trump supporters: 
 
 “It’s available on Microsoft shapes.” There are a lot of symbols you can make on Microsoft Word, and sometimes symbols SYMBOLIZE ideas, concepts, or groups. A cross for instance. I feel silly explaining this to you. This explanation is so inane that I feel so condescending refuting it to you, ostensibly my boss, that it feels insubordinate. 
 
 “It’s a sheriff star.” Because users on the white supremacist forums where this image was found were no doubt implying Hillary is in the pocket of the sheriffs. You know, sheriffs. The group stereotypically associated with greed and money. 
 
 “He didn’t make it; he’s too busy to pay attention to everything he tweets out.” This is not an excuse for racism. Trump’s twitter account is seen by millions of people, and he is responsible for the message he’s sending to his supporters. Besides, Trump is running for president. Making mistakes because he wasn’t “paying attention” isn’t an excuse that qualifies him for the highest office in the land in any way. 
 
 “It was an accident.” Then where is the apology? 
 
 These explanations are so facile, infantile in their blatant disregard for context or logic that I can only imagine them being delivered by someone doing so while grinning and winking. 
 
 And then there’s the final explanation, the one most frequently cited by Trump’s most “reasonable” supporters on the Internet: 
 
 “Trump has a Jewish son-in-law, and granddaughter: he can’t be anti-Semitic.” 
 
 Mr. Kushner, I invite you to look through all of those images in the slideshow above, the vast majority sent in your father-in-law’s name. Right now, this hate is directed to one of your employees, but the message applies equally to your wife and daughter. 
 
 You went to Harvard, and hold two graduate degrees. Please do not condescend to me and pretend you don’t understand the imagery of a six-sided star when juxtaposed with money and accusations of financial dishonesty. I’m asking you, not as a “gotcha” journalist or as a liberal but as a human being: how do you allow this? Because, Mr. Kushner, you are allowing this. Your father-in-law’s repeated accidental winks to the white supremacist community is perhaps a savvy political strategy if the neo-Nazis are considered a sizable voting block—I confess, I haven’t done my research on that front. But when you stand silent and smiling in the background, his Jewish son-in-law, you’re giving his most hateful supporters tacit approval. Because maybe Donald Trump isn’t anti-Semitic. To be perfectly honest, I don’t think he is. But I know many of his supporters are, and they believe for whatever reason that Trump is the candidate for them. 
 
 I can’t abide another defensive blame-shift to the media or to “politically correct culture gone amok.” David Duke, outspoken and explicit white supremacist, anti-Semite, and former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, saw the image your father-in-law tweeted out, and to him the message was quite clear to him. Those aren’t stereotypical “sheriff” hands in the corner. 
 
 The worst people in this country saw your father-in-law’s message and took it as they saw fit. And yet Donald Trump in his response chose not to condemn them, the anti-Semites who, by his argument were obviously misinterpreting the image, but the media. 
 
 And now, Mr. Kushner, I ask you: What are you going to do about this? Look at those tweets I got again, the ones calling me out for my Jewish last name, insulting my nose, evoking the holocaust, and tell me I’m being too sensitive. Read about the origins of that image and see the type of people it attracted like a flies to human waste and tell me this whole story is just the work of the “dishonest media.” Look at that image and tell me, honestly, that you just saw a “Sheriff’s Star.” I didn’t see a sheriff star, Mr. Kushner, and I’m a smart person. After all, I work for your paper. 
 
 Edmund Burke once said, in times that are starting to seem more and more similar: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Well, here I am, and here we are. Both Jewish, both members of the media. And you might choose silence, but I’ve said my piece. 
 
 Respectfully, 
 
 Dana Schwartz
– With just over four months to go until Election Day, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are locked in battle over the shape of a star. In a statement issued Monday, the Clinton campaign's director of Jewish outreach slammed the Trump campaign's use of a Star of David in an anti-Clinton image as "blatantly anti-Semitic," reports the New York Times, which notes that Mic traced the image to a message board used by white supremacists. Trump, however, tweeted: "Dishonest media is trying their absolute best to depict a star in a tweet as the Star of David rather than a Sheriff's Star, or plain star." Dan Scavino, Trump's social media director, said the image had been "lifted from an anti-Hillary Twitter user where countless images appear." Trump later issued a statement on his website saying the star is used by "sheriffs who deal with criminals and criminal behavior" and that Clinton "is just trying to divert attention from the dishonest behavior of herself and her husband." Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt wasn't buying the "sheriff's badge" line, the Guardian reports. He told CNN on Monday that the Trump campaign has had a troubling tone for months. The first couple of times Trump did things like retweet images from white supremacists could be called mistakes, he said. "But we're now at the sixth or seventh time the Trump campaign has invoked bigotry or racism. It's a pattern that’s perplexing, troubling, and wrong."