Donald Trump retweets man calling him a fascist

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Donald Trump has retweeted a man calling him a "fascist".

In a seemingly inexplicable move, the US President shared a post by a Twitter user called Mike Holden, who was responding to a Fox News post.

The right-wing news outlet had tweeted a link to a story about Mr Trump "seriously considering" a pardon to former Sherrif Joe Arpaio - who was recently found guilty of criminal contempt for defying a state judge’s order to stop traffic patrols targeting suspected undocumented immigrants.

Having retweeted the initial Fox News post, he did the same with Mr Holden's reply to it, saying: "He's a fascist, so not unusual."

At the time of writing, Mr Holden had 831 followers.

Mr Holden posted a follow-up message joking that the retweet showed that "Donald agrees with me".

Mr Trump usually only retweets things that he approves of. The posts he shares tend to come from supporters or from media organisations sharing stories that he likes.

It wasn't clear from the original tweet whether Mr Holden was referring Mr Trump or Mr Arpaio, or both – but follow-up tweets from his account suggested that he was talking about the President.

About 15 minutes after the post was shared, the President undid his retweet. It wasn't clear whether Mr Trump had retweeted him by mistake, or had chosen to un-share the post after the fact.

He also revoked a retweet of a post about the "fake news media", which depicted the "Trump train" running over a person with the word CNN written on their head. Many pointed out that post seemed irresponsible given the fact that one person died and many were injured in Charlottesville when a car was driven into anti-fascist protestors.

The posts came just hours after the President finally condemned the racist, Nazi and fascist protestors who were involved in violence in the Virginia city. He had been criticised for taking days to single out those protestors, apparently refraining from distancing himself from far-right activists and instead condemning violence on "many sides".

The President's retweet wasn't the first time Mr Trump has shared a post making explicit reference to fascism. In 2016, while Mr Trump was still on the campaign trail, he retweeted a message that consisted entirely of a quote attributed to Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini, and sent by a parody account that explicit referenced him.

Mr Trump said after that event that he wanted "to be associated with interesting quotes".

"Mussolini was Mussolini... What difference does it make?" he said. "It got your attention, didn't it?"