Conservative News Site Photoshops Pro-Trump Hat Onto Love Island Star

Caleb EcarmaSep 17th, 2019, 1:10 pm
 

A photo posted by British reality TV star Rykard Jenkins was taken and edited by a fringe right-wing news site to make it appear as though he wore a red hat touting support for President Donald Trump

“Woke up this morning to know I’m the new face for the 2020 @realDonaldTrump campaign ?”wrote Jenkins, who appeared on the ITV2 reality series Love Island, in response to the Conservative News Daily using his likeness to advertise pro-Trump hats.

The website’s article lists Jenkins as one of “our happy customers” who received one of their knockoff Trump 2020 hats, despite the logo clearly being photoshopped on and Conservative News Daily being totally unaffiliated with the Trump campaign. The original photo features Jenkins wearing a red cap that reads “FBX” on it, which is an abbreviation for a U.K. apparel brand called the Fox Berry Boys.

Jenkins addressed the incident by clarifying that he’s “not at all involved in politics, let alone American politics.”

“I made a joke and I got a good 5,000 Americans saying ‘how can you say that?’ and I was like, oh my god, I didn’t think it would go anywhere and now it’s this massive political conspiracy,” he added, referencing the viral tweet he shared after realizing his face was being used to market the hats. “The only thing I could complain about, it’s about altering the pictures and making them look like they have a political agenda. For example, if that picture had been edited to have Gucci on it, it wouldn’t matter would it?”

“We don’t follow politics much. But we know enough that @realdonaldtrump caps are not in our league,” the London-based company noted in an Instagram post on the article.

Tags:
Caleb Ecarma

Caleb Ecarma was a reporter at Mediaite. Email him here: caleb@mediaite.com Follow him on Twitter here: @calebecarma