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Trump shares violent meme from account that promoted racist propaganda from David Duke

It came hours after Trump retweeted one of the internet's most notorious Pizzagate pushers.

Aaron Rupar Twitter
CREDIT: AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais
CREDIT: AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais

On Tuesday morning, President Trump retweeted an image of “the Trump Train” striking a CNN journalist. He shared the image with his 36 million followers three days after an alleged neo-Nazi sympathizer ran over a woman during a white supremacist rally in Virginia, killing her.

Trump later undid his retweet, but the damage was done. Further, the account he promoted — @SLandinSoCal — has repeatedly posted racist content, including anti-Semitic propaganda from David Duke’s website:

The account has also amplified the racist birther conspiracy theory:

The user said that stereotypes about blacks were accurate and “a result of actions by that group.”

She’s identified with the “white pride” movement:

The pseudonymous user is a member of Gab, an alternative to Twitter promoted by white nationalists. She also pushed the baseless Pizzagate conspiracy theory about prominent Democrats being involved in a pizza parlor-based pedophilia ring:

She posted a number of obviously fake news stories about Obama:

Just this week, the account has posted racist memes:

She also recently posted a meme portraying Trump as a Christ-like figure:

Trump’s retweet of a meme depicting a journalist being hit by a train came on the same morning he retweeted and then un-retweeted a post calling him a fascist.

Both the tweet containing the image of the train striking the CNN journalist and the one calling him a fascist were replies to yet another tweet Trump retweeted — a Fox News report about how he’s considering a pardon for ex-Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who, as the reports details, “was found guilty two weeks ago of criminal contempt for defying a state judge’s order to stop traffic patrols targeting suspected undocumented immigrants.”

Trump, who is quoted in the story calling Arpaio “a great American patriot,” is considering a pardon for him despite proclaiming belatedly proclaiming that “racism is evil” on Monday, two days after the Virginia incident.

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On Monday night, Trump retweeted a tweet posted by Jack Posobiec, a fringe conspiracy theorist who was one of the internet’s most prominent pushers of Pizzagate.

Shortly after the election in November, Posobiec tried to discredit protesters at an anti-Trump rally outside the Trump International Hotel in Washington D.C. by planting “Rape Melania” signs in the crowd. And yet Trump chose to promote Posobiec to his 36 million followers anyway. He hasn’t reversed that retweet.

Shortly after he took over as White House chief of staff late last month, John Kelly reportedly talked with President Trump about toning down his bombastic Twitter habits. But if the past 24 hours are any indication, the president didn’t listen to him.

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Tuesday morning wasn’t the first time Trump promoted violence against CNN journalists on Twitter. In early July, he tweeted out a GIF of himself attacking a person whose head was replaced with CNN’s logo. It was later determined that the GIF originated with a Reddit user who had posted racist and anti-Semitic imagery.

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UPDATE: A White House official told CNN that Trump’s retweet of the train image was “inadvertently posted.”