Donald Trump, the current front-runner in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, on Friday rewteeted a post by an account with the handle “White Genocide TM,” which gives its location as “Jewmerica.”
Reuters identified the image for the account as that of George Lincoln Rockwell, a prominent figure in the neo-Nazi movement in the United States.
The tweet reads: “Poor Jeb. I could’ve sworn I saw him outside Trump Tower the other day!” It includes a doctored image of rival candidate Jeb Bush, the son of former president George H.W. Bush and brother of George W. Bush, holding up a sign reading: “Vote Trump.”
Jeb Bush’s communications director, Tim Miller, tweeted in response: “The Godwin’s Double: Trump’s anti-Jeb retweets now include one from a Nazi’s account and another calling Jeb a Nazi.”
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at the Westgate Las Vegas Resort and Casino on December 14, 2015 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images via JTA)
His reference to “Godwin’s Double” alludes to “Godwin’s Law,” an adage from the early days of the internet penned by lawyer Mike Godwin, which states that, “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.”
"@WhiteGenocideTM: @realDonaldTrump Poor Jeb. I could've sworn I saw him outside Trump Tower the other day! https://t.co/e5uLRubqla"
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 22, 2016
At the time of writing, Trump had not deleted the tweet. The owner of @WhiteGenocideTM has the account locked down, and must approve all follow requests before their tweets can be seen.
According to one of the responses to Trump’s retweet, the White Genocide account has previously claimed that the Holocaust was a hoax.
Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, converted to Orthodox Judaism before she married real estate developer Jared Kushner in 2009. Last year, she told Vogue magazine that she and her husband, Jared Kushner, keep Shabbat, including not using their telephones on the day of rest.
The Godwin's Double: Trump's anti-Jeb retweets now include one from a Nazi's account and another calling Jeb a Nazi.
— Tim Miller (@Timodc) January 22, 2016
Trump’s campaign has been marked by a pattern of inflammatory statements; he kicked off his campaign with a speech in which he said some Mexican immigrants are rapists and criminals.
He also sparked a furious outcry last month, when he called for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”
His campaign said in a statement that such a ban should stand “until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.” The statement added that the Republican front-runner’s proposal comes in response to a level of hatred among “large segments of the Muslim population” toward Americans.
The comments were criticized by US Orthodox Jewish groups, while Rick Kriseman, the Jewish mayor of St. Petersburg in Florida, said on Twitter that Trump was “banned” from his city.
The Orthodox Union and the Rabbinical Council of America did not name Trump or mention Muslims specifically in their statement, but said they “reject calls to limit immigration to the United States based on religion.”
AP contributed to this report