Former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski on Sunday insisted that a blatantly anti-Semitic tweet from the presumptive GOP presidential nominee was not controversial, calling the response to it "political correctness run amok."
"A tweet is a simple tweet. The bottom line is you can read into things that are not there," he said on CNN's "State of the Union."
On Saturday, Trump tweeted -- and then deleted -- a tweet accusing his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton of being the "most corrupt candidate ever," featuring the Jewish Star of David placed on top of a pile of $100 bills.
Trump's campaign later replaced the image, swapping out the star with a circle.
On Sunday, Mic News reported that the image may have originated from a white supremacist forum. It was posted June 22, more than a week before Trump's campaign tweeted it.
Trump routinely retweets white supremacists and neo-Nazis, and he has been silent regarding some of his supporters' anti-Semitic attacks against Jewish reporters.
Despite the blatant anti-Semitism contained in the image, Lewandowski -- who now serves as a paid commentator for CNN after Trump fired him last month -- continued to defend the tweet on Sunday.
"You are saying that's a simple star, a simple star that you would expect, like a star you would give a child, a sticker. A star that would be used would have five points, not six," CNN's Brianna Keilar said.
Lewandowski insisted that using the star wasn't meant to be offensive and that the media created the controversy.
"It's the same star that sheriff's departments use to represent law enforcement. To read into something that isn't there is -- that's the mainstream media trying to attack Donald Trump for something that really isn't there," he said.
"They put a new tweet up with a circle. The message is the same," he continued. "The message is that Hillary Clinton is corrupt. The bottom line is, this is political correctness run amok."
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.
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