Things had already gone off the rails by the time that CNN’s Brianna Keilar began speaking slowly and using small words to help Trump supporter Scottie Nell Hughes understand what a sheriff’s star actually looks like.

Hughes was summoned to defend the anti-Semitic image posted Saturday to Donald Trump‘s Twitter account. The image featured Hillary Clinton amid a sea of 100-dollar bills and a red Star of David proclaiming the caption “Most Corrupt Candidate Ever!”

“Why can’t he just admit that this was a mistake?” Keilar asked.

“It’s absurd, foolish, and ludicrous that we’re still talking about this on day three,” Hughes said. She added that this was a “petty controversy” that had been “magically” drummed up to obscure news about the FBI investigation into Clinton’s emails.

“Not magical, Scotty. In fairness, we didn’t tweet out the six-pointed star. Trump did,” Keilar responded, kicking off a contentious back-and-forth that touched on the definition of star, the provenance of the anti-Semitic image, and whether or not a tweet that had been deleted had been deleted. (In one sentence characteristic of the exchange, Keilar began, “Scottie, the way Twitter works…”)

The exchange was another operatic display of unreason from Hughes, whose bottomless capacity to champion and defend anything Trump says or does made her the subject of an unsparing SNL parody back in April.

Before it was tweeted out by Trump’s account, the image appeared on a message thread that trafficked in neo-Nazi and white supremacist memes (as Mic originally reported). Trump subsequently took down the image, replacing it with another one in which the red Star of David was replaced by a red circle.

Trump on Monday blamed the media for reporting on his gaffe, claiming that the six-sided star was a sheriff’s star. One Trump supporter groused on CNN that the social media team had been inundated with so many images from supporters that they could not have vetted them before posting them on Trump’s official account. Former Trump campaign manager and current paid CNN contributor Corey Lewandowski called the brouhaha “political correctness run amok.”

Hughes concluded the exchange with a sparkling gem of doublethink: She chastised the media for failing to have an “honest discussion” with the Trump campaign, but then defended the campaign’s decision to stay silent on the issue.

[image via screengrab]

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.