Donald Trump under fire for anti-Semitic tweet

U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump deleted a tweet evoking anti-Semitism after faced with public outrage on Saturday.

The Washington Post reported on Sunday that Donald Trump tweeted an image of his rival Hillary Clinton alongside “the Star of David,” bearing the words “most corrupt candidate ever!” with the background full of $100 bills.

The image, which seemed to support the anti-Semite idea of mocking the Jewish as corrupt and greedy, first appeared on June 15 on a tweeter account penchant for far-right political views. Trump had retweeted this without revealing the source, and later changed it with a circle instead of the star in two hours, after being accused of encouraging racism and anti-Semitism.

Josh Schwerin, spokesman for the Hillary Clinton campaign, asked on his personal Twitter account, “Why is there a Star of David?", questioning his intentions, and Libertarian nominee and former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson said Donald Trump is “clearly racist” on a CNN session.

This is not the first time the Republican nominee has been involved in a controversial post. In last November, Trump shared a meme showing false statistics which claimed “81 percent of whites murdered are killed by blacks,” initially uploaded by a Nazism follower.

In January this year, Trump triggered a strong backlash by retweeting a picture featuring Republican presidential candidate holding a sign reading “Vote for Trump” from a white supremacist’s account.

한기재기자 record@donga.com