Former Republican congressman and US presidential candidate Ron Paul on Monday was slammed as anti-Semitic and racist on social media over a cartoon he shared before quickly deleting.

The caricature portrayed members of various minority groups with distorted features, including a Jewish man with a large nose, beard and skullcap. Their outstretched arms join into a red fist adorned with the symbol of the Soviet Union and they cheer for “Cultural Marxism,” as they punch Uncle Sam in the face.

The cartoon was quickly deleted and replaced with an image of the words “political correctness” with a “No” symbol over them.

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Paul later wrote on his social media accounts that the cartoon was “inadvertently” posted by a staff member.

“I do not make my own social media posts and when I discovered the mistake it was immediately deleted,” he said.

.@RonPaul just tweeted (now deleted) this racist antisemitic cartoon. pic.twitter.com/jXQNiCyoCO — The Reagan Battalion (@ReaganBattalion) July 2, 2018

It was not the first time that Paul has claimed offensive content published in his name was not his doing.

In the 1980s and 1990s, he published eponymous financial advice newsletters that mined racist, homophobic and anti-Semitic tropes, although he later insisted that he did not vet everything in the publications, and blamed past associates for the offensive material.

JTA contributed to this report.