Donald Trump sparked a furious row over antisemitism after he tweeted a photo of Hillary Clinton next to a Star of David against a background of dollar bills.
The presumptive Republican presidential nominee was accused of "dog whistle" racism as the image came from a white-supremacist and neo-Nazi movement. The tweet was first shared by Trump at 9.37am on Saturday but such was the backlash on social media that by 11.19am it had been deleted and the star, linked to the Jewish symbol, was replaced with a circle.
The image first appeared on /pol/, according to the news site Mic.com. The far-right messaging site first shared the message more than a week before Trump's campaign did. It appeared under a thread named HillHistory.jpg, a possible nod to the neo-Nazi code for "HH" or "Heil Hitler", according to Mic.com.
Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), said he was "alarmed" that Trump had not spoken "out vociferously against these anti-Semites and racists and misogynists who continue to support him".
He said: "It's been outrageous to see him retweeting and now sourcing material from the website and other online resources from this crowd."
But Corey Lewandowski, Trump's former campaign manager and sidekick, defended him and denied the image was offensive.
"This is the same star that sheriff's departments all across the country use all over the place to represent law enforcement," he said on Sunday. He rubbished what he saw as an attempt to "attack Donald Trump for something that really isn't there".
But on white-supremacist forums Trump was praised for his support.
"The evangelicals will listen to his pro-Israel statements, while we will listen to his signals," Andrew Anglin wrote in the racist site Daily Stormer, according to the Washington Post. "By pushing this into the media, the Jews bring to the public the fact that yes, the majority of Hilary's [sic] donors are filthy Jew terrorists."
The New York billionaire has indeed made efforts to emphasise his pro-Israel credentials. He has boasted that his daughter Ivanka is a convert to Judaism.
The Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment about the tweet or the decision to delete it.
