tweet-and-delete

Yet Again, Donald Trump Forced to Delete an Offensive Tweet

Donald Trump
The real-life @realDonaldTrump sometimes doesn’t read what he retweets. Photo: Nati Harnik/AP/Corbis

Yet again, the presidential hopeful @realDonaldTrump has retweeted an offensive message on Twitter, and then, when it was pointed out to him how offensive it was, he deleted it.

But, then again, Trump has been tweeting and deleting for years. He generally blames a “young intern” for posting thoughtlessly, but sometimes he admits that he just didn’t look at the post before he shared it, as was the case on Tuesday.

The latest retweet was originally posted by Twitter user @AndreaWeslien and said, “ADIOS, JEB aka JOSE.” This was accompanied by a series of Photoshopped images, including one photo of Jeb Bush next to a swastika and another showing a sombrero-wearing Bush standing next to a cactus.

A spokesperson for Trump said the Donald did, indeed, retweet the post himself, but “he did not see the accompanying image, and the retweet has since been deleted.”

Today’s swastika incident is reminiscent of the time earlier this summer when Trump’s account tweeted a photo of an American flag over two men wearing Nazi uniforms. Trump blamed this particular accident on a careless “young intern.”

And last month, after it became clear that Iowa Republicans preferred presidential candidate Ben Carson over him, Trump retweeted a message suggesting that there was “too much Monsanto in the corn.” The tweet was later deleted, but the blame was again placed on — you guessed it — a young intern.

Part of Trump’s appeal is his tweet-from-the-hip honesty; he is, much to his supporters’ delight, unfiltered.

Here are a few of the things that got through his non-filter:

In September, Trump retweeted one of his old messages that read, “I would like to extend my best wishes to all, even the haters and losers, on this special date, September 11th.” He deleted both tweets, which many in the media called “classless.”

And remember that time in April when Trump retweeted a Texas college student’s attack on Hillary Clinton? “If Hillary Clinton can’t satisfy her husband what makes her think she can satisfy America?” the tweet read. After less than three hours the tweet was deleted, the Daily Mail reported at the time. The blame was put on a Trump staffer.

It sounds like employees of the Trump campaign need a serious talking-to. Or perhaps, as Jeb Bush advised on Wednesday, the boorish businessman should just “stop tweeting at night.”

Donald Trump’s Latest Nazi-Themed Twitter Gaffe