In a tweet on Monday, Donald Trump said he had not meant the six-pointed star to refer to the Star of David, which is a symbol of Judaism. (Reuters file photo)
Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, on Monday lashed out at the press for continuing to report on the fallout from a post he made to social media that included an image depicting Democratic rival Hillary Clinton against a backdrop of cash and a Star of David.
In a tweet on Monday, Trump said he had not meant the six-pointed star to refer to the Star of David, which is a symbol of Judaism. Rather, he said, the star could have referred to a sheriff's badge, which is shaped similarly except for small circles at the ends of each of its six points, or a "plain 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!" Trump wrote on Twitter, two days after he tweeted the original image.
His tweet came after Mic News reported on Sunday the image attacking Clinton, which included the words: "History made" and, inside the star, "most corrupt candidate ever!" had been shared on a neo-Nazi web forum called /pol/. Reuters confirmed the image was posted there on June 22 by viewing a link to an archived version of a /pol/ page, though the page has since been updated and the image removed.
The Nazis forced Jews to wear a Star of David on their clothing to identify themselves during the Holocaust.
Saturday's incident was the latest departure by Trump from a recent effort to appease Republicans worried about his brash public persona by trying to appear more restrained.
In June, Trump fired his campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and began using a teleprompter to make speeches, hoping to show that his campaign could be more inclusive after earlier mishaps, including his statement that Mexicans crossing the US border illegally were "rapists" and his mocking of a disabled reporter, which Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, has begun using in attack ads against him.
Ed Brookover, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign, said in an interview on CNN on Monday the campaign felt it had "corrected" the issue about the star by deleting Trump's original tweet. Trump later tweeted another version of the image in which the star was replaced by a circle.
Brookover said the image's earlier appearance on the neo-Nazi forum was irrelevant.
"These images get posted and reposted and reposted on social media on many forums," he said. "There was never any intention of anti-Semitism."
© Thomson Reuters 2016