Donald Trump
US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump . (photo credit:REUTERS)

 

NEW YORK – Donald Trump brandished a graphic targeting Hillary Clinton at a campaign rally on Thursday that bears remarkable resemblance to a graphic tweeted out last month by David Duke, a white supremacist and former Ku Klux Klan leader who supports the Republican’s presidential campaign.

Duke’s original July 5 graphic features an emblem of the Israeli flag embedded on a twenty dollar bill, and Clinton’s portrait replacing that of former US president Andrew Jackson, who currently graces the bill. Trump’s version of the graphic– which alleges ties between foreign governments and the Clinton Foundation– removes the Jewish star feature, but is identical in all other respects.

Duke has made a name for himself perpetuating Jewish conspiracy theories widely cast as anti-Semitic. His enthusiastic support for the Republican presidential nominee has repeatedly dogged the Trump campaign, which has attracted followers from a host of ultra-right wing groups associated with anti-Jewish propaganda.

Duke’s original graphic, sent out on Twitter, includes the hashtags “#CrookedHillary,” “#RiggedSystem,” “#TrumpWasRight” and “#AmericaFirst.”

Trump has previously stepped in hot water over graphics interpreted as thematically anti-Semitic: Last month he denied that a tweet sent out from his account, featuring a six-pointed star pasted over a pile of money accusing Clinton of corruption, was not, in fact, a Star of David.

As reported by The Jerusalem Post