The son of Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump tweeted an apology Monday after misidentifying a woman giving a Nazi salute at this month's canceled Chicago Trump rally as a Bernie Sanders supporter.
“Nazi salute woman at Chicago rally wasn’t Bernie supporter Portia Boulger- was someone else,” Donald Trump Jr. tweeted. “Got bad info. My apologies.
In fact, the woman in the photograph snapped at Trump’s ill-fated Chicago rally at the University of Illinois at Chicago Pavillion on March 11 was actually Birgitt Peterson of Yorkville.
Peterson, who was born in West Berlin, is pictured wearing a Trump shirt in the widely circulated photo from earlier this month. Following the rally, she told the New York Times that she gave the Nazi salute after encountering "rude" protesters, one of whom was holding a poster with Adolf Hitler's likeness.
"They said Trump is a second Hitler," Peterson told the paper. "I said do you know what that sign stands for? Do you know who Hitler really was?"
Boulger, who is an organizer for Women for Bernie, later addressed Trump Jr.’s apology.
“Why did it take two weeks for you to apologize?” Boulger tweeted. “What was your goal (in) all this? Did you think about me or my family?”
“Do you understand the ramifications of your actions?” She added in a separate tweet. “Do you know [sic] understand how you caused me a horrible two weeks.”
Boulger also responded unfavorably after being asked if she felt Trump Jr.’s apology was sincere.
“Well, it didn’t seem very sincere,” She tweeted. “May want to ask him. Maybe his dad knows. I was taught better that’s for sure.”
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The controversy started when Trump Jr. retweeted an incendiary Twitter post.
“The ‘Trump Nazi’ is Portia Boulger, who runs the Women for Bernie Sanders Twitter account,” the tweet read. “It’s another media plant.”
“Big surprise. However, the media will never run with this,” Trump Jr. wrote in the retweet.
Despite the bedlam at his cancelled Chicago rally, Trump still managed to win Illinois’ March 15 Republican presidential primary.
