FILE — May 23, 2014 — Jenn Budenz lies on a blanket with her 2-month-old son AJ as they visit the grave of her husband and father of her child Major Andrew Budenz, a Marine buried at the Miramar National Cemetery in San Diego. Budenz was killed in a motorcycle accident. Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune

As part of his persistent critical campaign against NFL players kneeling during the national anthem, President Donald Trump on Thursday retweeted a photo that shows a woman and a young child lying on a blanket before a military veteran’s grave.

“So beautiful,” Trump said in his tweet, resharing the image posted by a Twitter user named @CoreyLMJones. “Show this picture to NFL players who still kneel!”

The implication was that the veteran had died fighting for his country. But the veteran’s tragic death occurred in the United States after his deployments. We know this because the 2014 photo is from The San Diego Union-Tribune.

The veteran, Maj. Andrew Budenz, who was a Marine C-130 pilot in Iraq and Afghanistan, was killed in September 2013 in a motorcycle accident. He is buried at at Miramar National Cemetery in San Diego, and his wife, Jenn Budenz, was visiting his grave nearly every day when The San Diego Union-Tribune published that photo around Memorial Day 2014 in a story by staff writer Jeanette Steele.

Read the story behind this photo: At national cemetery, sentinels to love

The image by Union-Tribune photographer Hayne Palmour IV shows Jenn Budenz with the couple's then-2-month-old son, AJ. It was part of a series of photographs of mother and child published in the U-T at the time.

Jenn Budenz lies on a blanket with her 2-month-old son AJ as she looks at the headstone of her husband Major Andrew Budenz, who was a Marine C-130 pilot in Iraq and Afghanistan, as she visits her husband's grave at the Miramar National Cemetery in San Diego. Hayne Palmour IV / UT San Diego

photo Hayne Palmour IV / UT San Diego

Sarah Leshay, a science teacher in Massachusetts, alerted the Union-Tribune about the photo’s use Thursday morning.

"The tweet implies he died in combat and is being used as an example of why the NFL should not kneel,” Leshay wrote in an email. “I dislike inaccurate information, and felt you might want to know."

Leshay told us:

I saw the image this morning and was interested if it was actually representing one of our servicemen killed in action — and if so, I hate it being used for politics. So I did some research and found the article online — it didn't sit right with me, which is why I reached out. I work hard to teach my students to check their scientific sources and not to repost "fake news" — and I think everyone, especially in politics, should also do that.

Palmour, the Union-Tribune photographer who took the photo, said he was not surprised that the photo was in wide circulation — again.

“It’s not the first time I’ve seen that set of photos passed around the internet without context,” he said. “The one thing that hit me was that he’s the first president to comment on my photo. My first thought was, well, I just became part of the historical record that is Trump’s tweets.”

The tweet itself drew a lot of reactions with some people saying Trump was exploiting an image, others saying Trump was supporting the troops, and still others focusing on the sheer emotion of the photograph.

Trump has spearheaded the divisive debate over NFL players taking a knee during the national anthem to protest police brutality and racial inequality for months, sharply criticizing the league and its players who have taken a knee or refused to stand during the national anthem played before every game.

The protest movement was launched by former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick in 2016 and at its height led to more than 200 NFL players sitting or kneeling during the anthem, ESPN reported in September.

Trump’s tweet, which he retweeted just after 6:30 a.m. in Washington, had been retweeted more than 18,000 times and liked nearly 65,000 times after about eight hours.

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Email: luis.gomez@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @RunGomez

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