Ex-Trump Adviser: Star Of David Tweet Not Offensive Because It’s Just A “Geometric Image”
48 hours after presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump used his Twitter account to send a shout-out to his Jew-hatin’ white supremacist base, his supporters are still trying to deal with the fallout, doing their level best to blame the PC-culture or an overzealous press on the latest Trump controversy. (The man himself has taken to using the ‘sheriff’s badge’ defense.)
Appearing on CNN Monday morning, former Trump adviser Michael Caputo, who resigned after celebrating ex-campaign manager Corey Lewandowski’s firing, tried to justify the candidate sending out an image that was created and used by neo-Nazis. During a panel discussion, Caputo told host John Berman that while this was an “unforced error” by the campaign, Trump has nothing to apologize for (even though he deleted the original tweet and put up an edited one).
And why, pray tell, shouldn’t there be a ‘my bad’ coming from The Donald? Because the star is just a “geometric image that some associate with the horrible days of Nazi Germany.” Caputo noted that there was never any intention on Donald Trump’s part to offend anyone. Besides, the only people who found it to be offensive were those in the media, who “ginned it up,” so case closed.
After Berman pointed out that the Trump did the ginning up by tweeting out the meme originally, and that the image was initially created by white supremacists and shared on alt-right message boards and Twitter accounts, Caputo lost his shit. He began yelling at Berman, asking him if he knew this to be the truth, apparently unaware that this had already been widely reported. The CNN anchor, wide-eyed and incredulous, shouted back at Caputo that it was true that the image came from the racist web.
Not willing to wave the surrender flag, Caputo kept digging himself into a deeper hole. He stated that it was hard to believe that anyone from Trump’s team was visiting white supremacy websites or social media accounts. He then noted that Trump has so many fans that the social media team is inundated with images and memes that they want the candidate to tweet out and post. So, things like this unfortunately happen because of the thousands of things sent to the reality TV star on a daily basis.
If you are wondering, yes, Caputo’s argument at the end of the discussion is that it isn’t Trump’s fault when he sends out bigoted imagery created by his white nationalist fanbase because he doesn’t have the time to vet these things. Therefore, we should just accept the fact that he’ll continue to send out racist memes and messages and not expect him to take any responsibility for doing so. He can’t be expected to keep track of these things, y’know!
