Donald Trump campaign tweets photo with Nazi soldiers – then leads polls

Donald Trump, stacks of money, the White House, an American flag ... and, apparently, Nazi soldiers: is this the face of the new Republican frontrunner for president of the United States?

The real-estate mogul turned entertainer turned political rabble-rouser-in-chief tweeted a photo of himself on Tuesday – #MakeAmericaGreatAgain – which, upon closer inspection, revealed something shocking to his 3.2 million followers.

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Though the soldiers Photoshopped behind a red stripe of the American flag would seem to be members of the country’s armed forces, the soldiers actually have the SS eagle insignia on their arms. At least one of the troops is wearing the dot camouflage print associated with Nazis.

The campaign appears to have used a stock image – available online – of re-enactors, not actual SS soldiers.

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That didn’t stop the Trump campaign from deleting its tweet and blaming the incident on “a young intern”.

In the same hour as the apparent Nazi imagery surfaced, USA Today released a poll showing that Trump is now the leading candidate for the Republican party’s presidential nomination.

The nationwide survey has Trump out ahead of the Republican field – now 15 competitors and counting – with 17% of support. Florida governor Jeb Bush follows at 14%.

Trump jumped six percentage points in the USA Today/Suffolk University poll from June to July, a period during which he erroneously accused the Mexican government of deliberately sending drugs, rapists and criminals to the US and asserted – to legions of supporters – that “I’m, like, a really smart person”.

When stacked up against Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton, the same survey showed that he polled worse than six other Republican candidates. Earlier on Tuesday, as Clinton was making remarks on Capitol Hill about her deliberations over the landmark nuclear deal with Iran, Trump released a statement about her: “She is obviously very nervous when she has to revert to issues that have already been settled given the absolute accuracy of my statement” on Mexico.

It remains unclear how the Nazi slip-up will affect Trump’s standing with voters. The error was uncovered after Twitter user Michael Niemerg asked Trump on Tuesday if the soldiers in his campaign image were part of the army that defended Nazi Germany, the Wehrmacht.

Internet sleuths quickly investigated the matter:

A campaign spokesperson said that Trump has spent the day at the opening of a development in Charlottesville, Virginia, and that an intern was responsible for the tweet.

“A young intern created and posted the image and did not see the very faded figures within the flag of the stock photo,” the spokesperson told the Guardian. “The intern apologized and immediately deleted the tweet.”