Posted on 07/03/2016 4:10:13 PM PDT by Kaslin
I passed on this yesterday because I agreed with what Lewandowski says here, more or less. It’s not a matter of political correctness or incorrectness, it’s a matter of “dog whistle” accusations being unfalsifiable. How do you prove that Trump, or whoever posted that image from his account, saw something anti-semitic in the shape of the star and tweeted it out hoping that others would see it too? As a matter of strategy, how would it benefit him to do something like that? White supremacists, presumably the target audience for the “dog whistle,” have been vocal about supporting him, but their votes are locked up. It’s swing voters whom Trump needs now. A news cycle devoted to whether his campaign has a problem with Jews is, shall we say, unhelpful in that regard.
Besides, does this sound like a guy who’s eager to Jew-bait?
[O]n Thursday, he immediately rebuked man at a campaign rally who said criticized “Zionist Israel.”
Trump told the man: “Israel is a very, very important ally of the United States and we are going to protect them 100% — 100%. It’s our true friend over there.”
Within an hour of a backlash erupting on social media yesterday, he had replaced the Star of David shape in the Hillary image with a circle, further evidence that any similarity was unintended. If we’re going to fire a missile as powerful as an accusation of anti-semitism, maybe let’s base it on something more concrete than a generic shape in Photoshop.
Something like … this, maybe:
Mic discovered Sunday that Donald Trump’s Twitter account wasn’t the first place the meme appeared. The image was previously featured on /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…
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…
It is currently unclear as to whether Trump’s team found this image from @FishBoneHead1’s Twitter account, from /pol/ or from another digital repository for racist, xenophobic and violent imagery. When Trump’s team sources memes, images and other forms of media from Twitter, the team has a longstanding pattern of attributing the account from which they found it. Among the many benefits of this practice of attribution is that it creates a desirable distance between the presidential candidate and the images he tweets.
Where did Team Trump get the image? If they found it on an alt-right message board, this isn’t an innocent mistake. And even though playing footsie with white supremacists isn’t in his long-term political interests, that hasn’t stopped him from doing it before. Playing dumb on who David Duke is when Jake Tapper invited him to reject Duke’s support a few months back is a classic example. That’s presumably why his alt-right fan base forgives him for his sporadic pro-Israel rhetoric: They probably don’t think he means it. It’s just something he says because he has to say it to keep the media off his back. Once he’s safely elected, then we’ll see the “real” Trump. In fact, some white supremacists are celebrating yesterday’s image because it links Hillary to a “Jew star.” Evidently they don’t think it’s an innocent mistake either.
The most plausible theory of what happened here, I think, is Yair Rosenberg’s, who wrote this back in February about Trump’s obliviousness towards anti-semitic tropes:
Some might see Trumps strange likening of Jewish groups to the KKK as an attempt to dog whistle to his bigoted supporters. But more likely, he was simply flailing in a largely nonsensical stream-of-consciousness to avoid answering the question. The problem, in this instance, was not that Trump was trying to express bigotry, but that he did not even recognize that what he was saying could be construed as such. This combination of actual animus and obliviousness is what makes Trumps rhetoricand its wall-to-wall coverage by a ratings-hungry news mediaso dangerous.
Play with fire and you’ll get burned, even if only accidentally. Whether intentionally or not, Trump’s built a devoted following within the online hangouts of white supremacists. He’s surely aware of it and he hasn’t gone out of his way to discourage it. His denunciations of their support have been largely perfunctory. It may be that one of his racist fans tweeted that image at his account fully intending the symbolism in the shape of the star, then Trump’s Twitter guy saw it and reproduced it without picking up on the symbolism himself. (The reason the image was reproduced rather than simply retweeted may have been because Trump’s guy wanted to add something to the image. In Trump’s version, there was a screencap of some Fox News poll data appended beneath the Hillary/star graphic.) It reminds me of this kerfuffle from back in November, when Trump stupidly retweeted something from a fan claiming that 81 percent of homicides involving white victims are perpetrated by blacks. In reality, 82 percent of homicides with white victims are perpetrated by whites. It was propaganda designed to reinforce the stereotype that blacks are predators. But whoever was running Trump’s Twitter account that day was too stupid not to see that the numbers were obviously bogus and too lazy not to take three minutes to check them by googling. He got suckered by racist propaganda. I’ll bet the same thing happened here. And it’ll happen again.
Corey Lewandowski: Donald Trump's Star of Davis is a 'simple' sheriff's star
The retards at Hotair still trying to use identity politics/racism to go after Trump, eh? What a bunch of SJW ***holes they’ve become.
It was a boneheaded thing to tweet out. It was begging for the uproar that is now happening.
How I look at this situation:
It’s ok that Clintons gave away our national security, for their own pockets;
It’s ok that Barky is the worst pResident to EVER be in OUR White House;
It’s ok when Representatives and Senators make deals that hurt America and her people;
Not one word is said, nothing is done, it’s all ok, but let Mr. Trump, who by the way will be our next POTUS, do one thing or say one thing and all hell breaks loose...
Guess what, when President Trump is in OUR White House, those same people are going to be the biggest butt kissers of all, isn’t it funny that they think they run this Country, they forget WE put them in office and WE can take them OUT!!!
GO.TRUMP.GO!!! ALL THE WAY TO THE OVAL OFFICE!!!
CNN has been wall to wall with the Star of David thing. Hillary is just fine with compromising national security, by Trump has a “Jewish” symbol. Like they have a patent out on it or something.
Exactly. Not as dumb as Bill meeting with Loretta Lynch, but still stupid optics that benefit not at all while providing some fodder for the other side. Bad judgment.
NBC, etal should be ashamed.
The lefty sites are middle of the road between “oh this is devastating” and “Trump made the ‘mistake’ on purpose to get more play”, and when the actual tweet is shown, the chat loses interest...
I assure you — no one gives a tinkers damn about that pathetic reach. Here we have hillary committing espionage. She actually gets highly secured government documents HACKED!! She takes money from the Chinese for the sell out of the USA to the Chinese under the cover of a 10 minute speech by her impeached husband, the rapist. And these idiots think we care about a stupid graphic? Get lost.
Every time a dog whistle sounds, Hillary starts barking!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMZqS7q7voY
He should have put balls on the end of the points to look like a sheriff’s badge.
Yeah and they got it from the Huffandpuffington Compost. It was them who put the star there. The original tweet had a circle
Is that even possible?
Hey, Hot Air has nothing to do with that. It was the Huffandpuffington compost who replaced the circle with the star. So blame them and not Hot Air
It’s another media diversion: Instead of talking about the point of the image, Clinton’s crookedness, they’ll instead yammer on about Donald Trump yet again.
Isn’t the circle sacred to Hindus. I guess now he is anti-Hinduist or something.
“It was a boneheaded thing to tweet out. It was begging for the uproar that is now happening.”
You forgot the sarcastic tag.
Regardless, my message to the hysterical unwashed morons, Ivanka Trump married a Jew and subsequently converted to Judaism.
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