Politicians Keep Using Nazis In Campaign Photos, Apparently

On the afternoon of July 14, GOP presidential candidate and sun-dried tomato Donald Trump tweeted a patriotic campaign image featuring the American flag superimposed over his face and… a few soldiers wearing Nazi uniforms.

Although the tweet was swiftly deleted, the Internet managed to source the photo. It turns out that the image comes from stock photography website iStock, and was taken at a World War II reenactment in England. Fine.

The weird part is that the photographer, an Englishman named George Cairns told Mother Jones that politicians use photos of Nazi re-enactors more than we would think (read: ever).

Mother Jones’ Tim McDonnell reports:

George’s brother John is also a stock photographer, and took the image of Nazi reenactors that was accidentally used in a flier for the campaign of North Carolina state legislator Tim Spear in 2010.

“I have photos of American soldiers as well,” Cairns said. “But for some reason, politicians seem to be downloading Nazis.”…

In the world of stock photography, you have basically no control over who uses your photos, Cairns said. The best you can do is pick keywords for the images you upload that let people know exactly what they’re buying. In this case, Cairns said, Trump’s people should have been able to tell what they were looking at.

“I tried to keyword it carefully so people would be aware that it’s WWII fascists,” Cairns said.