The tweet, sent from @realDonaldTrump, showed a picture of Trump’s face superimposed onto the stars of the American flag.
Donald Trump unofficially kicked off open
season for the Republican primaries when he became one of the first
candidates to blame an intern for a Twitter gaffe.
This tried-and-true political maneuver
occurred after a historian noticed that Trump's latest campaign picture
included images of German Waffen-SS troops marching on the White House
lawn.
The tweet, sent from @realDonaldTrump,
showed a picture of Trump's face superimposed onto the stars of the
American flag, beside a picture of soldiers marching on the White House
lawn.
John Schindler, a military historian,
noticed the picture on Twitter when a follower asked him if it might
contain German, not American soldiers.
"It's actually much worse than that, it's
Waffen-SS . . . the people who ran the death camps," he said.
What's America coming to when a decent patriot can't #MakeAmericaGreatAgain with some help from the Waffen-SS? pic.twitter.com/vzWa1Miuce
— John Schindler (@20committee) July 14, 2015
Schindler, who got his PhD in history from
McMaster, identified them by their helmets and an eagle insignia on
their arm.
"Some people can tell a '56 Chevy from a '57
easily, some of us can tell German uniforms easily," Schindler said.
After deleting the picture from Twitter, a
spokesperson from Trump's camp reached out to CNN to blame the mishap on
an intern.
"Mr. Trump has been in Charlottesville,
Virginia, all day at the opening of a development. A young intern
created and posted the image and did not see the very faded figures
within the flag of the stock photo," Michael Cohen, the executive vice
president of Trump Organization, told CNN in an email. "The intern
apologized and immediately deleted the tweet."
The picture actually comes from a stock
photo featuring actors dressed as soldiers. Tim McDonnell, from Mother
Jones, tracked down the photographer George Cairns, who confirmed the
picture featured actors dressed in Waffen-SS uniforms.
Torstar News Service
Post a Comment