On Saturday, Donald Trump, the presumptive presidential nominee of the Republican Party, tweeted an anti-Semitic attack on the presumptive democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton. The tweet was a collection of anti-Semitic tropes — a pile money, a star of David and the words “Most Corrupt Candidate Ever.”
The tweet was met by a wave of criticism and was ultimate swapped out for a new version that substituted the star of David with a circle. Neither Trump nor the campaign offered any immediate apology or explanation.
By Sunday morning, it was revealed that the graphic originated on a white supremacist twitter account, eliminating any ambiguity about it’s meaning. Nevertheless, Trump’s former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, defended the tweet on Sunday, calling it a “Sheriff’s star.” (It was not a Sheriff’s star, which features small globes at the end of each point.)
Lewandowski’s argument was parroted by Trump himself on Monday morning:
Dishonest media is trying their absolute best to depict a star in a tweet as the Star of David rather than a Sheriff's Star, or plain star!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 4, 2016
Fox News also did not cover the controversy at all until Monday morning, two days after the original tweet. In a 52 second segment, anchor Gregg Jarrett asks Peter Doocy to explain the “uproar.”
Doocy described a “debate on social media” about whether Trump’s tweet was “using the star of David” to attack Hillary Clinton. Doocy then teed up a clip of Lewandowski attacking the “mainstream media” for making this an issue.
Notably, Doocy does not mention that the image used by Trump was created by a white supremacist.
The only other coverage of the issue on Fox News was an even shorter segment that aired on Monday afternoon. In this segment, which lasted just 15 seconds, Fox News reporter Mike Emmanuel says the “Clinton campaign” is accusing Trump of “using anti-Semitic artwork.” He then notes that Trump is “firing back” saying the media is trying to “make it a star of David” when it is really “a Sheriff’s star or another star.”
“We’ve got four more months of these back-and-forths,” Emmanuel says, signing off.
Emmanuel does not mention that the image was created by a white supremacist or even show an image of the original tweet.
Neither segment mentions that Trump has repeatedly used his Twitter account to amplify white supremacists.
It is, of course, difficult to cover any subject in depth in 67 seconds.