Republican Senator refuses to apologize after posting photo of Jewish opponent with digitally enlarged nose
Senator David Perdue (R-GA) posted a campaign ad featuring an image of his Jewish opponent, Jon Ossoff, digitally manipulated to have a larger nose. Once the timeworn antisemitic stereotype was noticed, he was forced to retract the ad, but Perdue is refusing to apologize for it. Matt Novak summarizes the imbroglio:
The photoshopped ad, first reported by Forward, featured photos of Ossoff along with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who's also Jewish, and included text that reads Democrats are trying to buy Georgia!" along with Schumer's SUPER PAC is spending $3 million in Georgia for Jon Ossoff!"
The original unedited photo was taken for Reuters by photojournalist Chris Aluka Berry in 2017 after Ossoff lost an election for Georgia's 6th Congressional District. Perdue's campaign denied that the edit had been intentional and sought to distance itself from the unnamed designer who made the ad.
Purdue claims it was an "accident" caused by a filter, but was unable to explain exactly how that happened.