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Not all sheriffs.

Mark Piscotty/Getty Images

Donald Trump’s assertion that the six-pointed star featured in an attack on “Crooked Hillary” is a sheriff’s star, not the Star of David, has strained credulity, not least because the image was apparently taken from an anti-Semitic message board.

As Jeet Heer writes in The New Republic, it is more likely that this is the latest example of Trump “playing footsie with the most extremist elements of American society.” Among the many reasons to doubt Trump’s claim that the star is a symbol for “sheriffs who deal with criminals and criminal behavior” is that this message doesn’t come through at all.