Now, take a good look at that image. In among more ordinary characters—Trump himself, his running mate, two of his sons, Roger Stone, Chris Christie, Rudy Guiliani, and Ben Carson—the “deplorables” include wild-eyed conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, alt-right apologist Milo Yiannopoulos, and a curious cartoon figure of a frog with a nefarious history. “Pepe the Frog,” it turns out, is an Internet meme appropriated by alt-right racists and white nationalists, often depicted decked out in a Nazi uniform.
So Hillary Clinton just claimed that Trump’s supporters are deplorable racists—and his campaign responded by borrowing propaganda images from deplorable racists.
At this point, we can’t just chalk it up to incompetence. Having been caught several times before recycling material from Internet racists, any other campaign would have had a meeting in which every person associated with the campaign was thoroughly trained to recognize and avoid this material and warned that if they failed to do so they would be hung out to dry. That the Trump campaign hasn’t done so implies that they just don’t care about telegraphing ideological sympathy with racists.
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