Trump put up an Instagram post with the statement, widely and wrongly attributed to Gandhi; his campaign has not commented on the controversy yet
Washington: Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump stoked another controversy after he posted a ‘quote’ on social media by Mahatma Gandhi, drawing sharp reaction from the US media which questioned the authenticity of the words attributed to the Indian leader.
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The controversial post on Donald Trump’s Instagram account
“First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win Mahatma Gandhi,” Trump wrote on social networking site Instagram on Monday as part of his effort to rally supporters. The post included a picture of hordes of supporters rallying at a Trump campaign stop in Alabama.
The quotation appears to be similar to words used in a 1918 trade union address by socialist leader Nicholas Klein. The Christian Science Monitor has put this among the top 10 political misquotes.
Klein had said: “First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they attack you and want to burn you. And then they build monuments to you.” There was no immediate response from the Trump’s campaign on the issue.