Internet Sleuths Prove Donald Trump Used an Image of Nazi Soldiers in a Patriotic Tweet

An intern has taken the fall for one of the campaign season's earliest facepalm moments in political tweeting.

On Tuesday, Donald Trump's Twitter account posted an image featuring his face, the American flag, the White House and ... people dressed as Hitler's Waffen-SS soldiers. "We need real leadership," the image stated. "We need results. Let's put the U.S. back into business!"

You can see the original image highlighted here, thanks to some nice animated GIF wizardry from Mother Jones' Ivylise Simones:

The image was clearly meant to show U.S. soldiers, but instead Trump's team pulled a photo from a World War II re-enactment featuring several men dressed as Nazi soldiers in green camo. 

History buffs spotted the oddity and sleuthed out the origins of the image.

Found @realDonaldTrump's german soldier stock image here (searched "world war II soldiers") http://t.co/GKkcNTUKpm pic.twitter.com/ysWGeePZIr

— Reed F. Richardson (@reedfrich) July 14, 2015

You can read all about how the Twitter investigation played out thanks to this handy recap from Mother Jones, which also tracked down the photographer of the original image.

(The weirdest part of the back story? The photographer's brother also took a picture of people in Nazi war garb that was used in a U.S. campaign ad. What are the odds?)

Trump's campaign deleted the tweet and eventually placed the blame on a "young intern":

Trump campaign responds: An intern did it. pic.twitter.com/oZBJAtwffl

— Eric Geller (@ericgeller) July 14, 2015