Multiple members of Donald Trump’s campaign are using Microsoft Word in their defense against accusations that he posted an anti-Semitic tweet.
The presumptive GOP nominee caused outrage when he posted an image of Hillary Clinton with a symbol resembling the Star of David on Twitter. But Trump's team said Microsoft Word's featuring of the same six-pointed star under its "Shapes" menu is proof that his use of it couldn't be anti-Semitic.
Here's the tweet, which many interpreted as evoking Jewish imagery:
Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus admitted the tweet was a "mistake" but denied it was meant to invoke harmful stereotypes of Jewish people.
“If you go to Microsoft Paint,” Priebus said, “you’ll see all the different stars that the guy could pick from.”
Dan Scavino, Trump's social media director, also pointed to Microsoft on Tuesday.
A spokesperson for Microsoft said that the star wasn't meant to connote any sort of religious iconography. However, it's worth noting that Scavino didn't create the image. He admits he "lifted [the picture] from an anti-Hillary Twitter user." And,as the Daily Beast notes, that user has a long history of tweeting racist imagery, including swastikas -- a symbol synonymous with Nazi Germany.
The image was also posted to a white supremacist website.
Trump himself also claimed it was not supposed to be a Star of David.
However, as one Twitter user points out, Adobe's Creative Suite labels the star a "Jewish Star."
During the Holocaust, Nazis forced Jewish people to wear the stars to identify themselves as lesser people.
Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.
