WASHINGTON -- House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) called Donald Trump’s tweet of Hillary Clinton with cash and a Star of David what it was on Tuesday: “anti-Semitic.”
In an interview with local Wisconsin radio station WTMJ, Ryan said his party’s presumptive presidential nominee needs to clean up his campaign and reprimand whoever was responsible for the tweet.
“Look, anti-Semitic images they’ve got no place in a presidential campaign,” Ryan said when asked what he thought about Trump’s tweet. “I don’t know what flunky put this up there.”
Ryan protected the candidate a bit, however, when host Charlie Sykes pointed out that despite Trump’s rhetoric, the speaker still plans to vote for him. Ryan said, from what he understands, Trump’s staff -- and not the candidate himself -- was responsible for the tweet.
“This is like the fifth time that Donald Trump, who you are supporting, I may remind you, has tweeted something,” Sykes said. “At some point does Reince Priebus, does somebody else, need to get him on the phone? And say Mr. Trump: ‘You’ve got to stop tweeting these things. These things are no longer accidents.’”
“I really believe he’s got to clean up the way his [social] media works,” Ryan said. “He’s got to clean this up.”
After deleting the initial tweet, Trump tweeted the image of the presumptive Democratic nominee again, but with a circle containing the words, “Most Corrupt Candidate Ever!”
Trump also denied that the star on the original tweet was anti-Semitic, calling it a “Sheriff’s Star, or plain star.”
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.
Before You Go
