July 14, 2015

The Insane Story Behind Trump’s Deleted Nazi Tweet

We spoke to the British photographer who took the photo seen in Trump’s campaign tweet.

Yikes.Georgethefourth/iStock/Twitter

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Earlier today, Donald Trump tweeted out a campaign poster featuring what appeared to be men in Nazi uniforms, superimposed over the American flag. The tweet was swiftly deleted, but not before the internet went to work tracking down the original image, sourced to the stock photography website iStock. 

Mother Jones can now reveal that the image in question was taken at a World War II reenactment near Kent, England, some time within the last five years, according to its photographer, George Cairns. We reached Cairns by Skype at his home in St Albans, a town just north of London, where he was hanging out playing video games when his Twitter feed started to blow up in response to the Trump story.

George Cairns, photographer. Supplied.

Cairns is a British freelance stock photographer and photography instructor who says he frequents war reenactments as good locations to pick up realistic-looking stock images—not just of Nazis, but also of American GIs and other soldiers. Cairns said he didn’t know much about Donald Trump beyond the controversy over a golf course the billionaire and GOP presidential contender bought in Scotland last year.

So what does Cairns make of Trump using his image to endorse his candidacy?

“Well luckily, it’s not endorsed him in a sense… So that’s a good thing,” he said. “I’m not a Trump supporter. I can sleep OK tonight.”

In an almost impossibly bizarre coincidence, this isn’t the first time the Cairns family has been caught up in a photo kerfuffle involving Nazis and American politicians. 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.”

This isn’t the first time the Cairns family has been caught up in a photo kerfuffle involving Nazis and American politicians.

The photo isn’t a massive moneymaker for the photographer. “I’ve sold that image twice this year,” Cairns said. Yesterday, Cairns made $8.64 on a sale. Today, $1.71. “I can buy a coffee!” he joked.

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.”

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Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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