| 1 | A political adviser to Donald Trump has been fired from the real-estate mogul's presidential campaign over racially charged posts on Facebook. |
| 2 | The Trump campaign confirmed to the Guardian on Sunday that longtime aide Sam Nunberg had been fired, after Business Insider reported on an eight-year-old social media post. |
| 3 | In 2007, a post on Nunberg's Facebook page referring to the veteran civil rights campaigner Al Sharpton read: "Meeting Rev Sharpton today, no joke - he will tell him that his daughter is N---!" |
| 4 | The profile contained a number of other charged posts, which included references to former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee as "Huckahuck" and to Barack Obama as a "Socialist Marxist Islamo Fascist Nazi Appeaser". |
| 5 | In an interview with CNN on Friday, Nunberg did not acknowledge writing the posts, which were still viewable on his Facebook page. |
| 6 | "Anything that was posted under my name does not mean I posted it," he said. |
| 7 | He added: "I am not adept at social media." |
| 8 | Nunberg took pains to emphasize that postings from more than a half-decade ago predated his association with the current Republican frontrunner. |
| 9 | "I have a long record of working with diverse people," he told CNN. |
| 10 | "And anything you are reporting on does not reflect anything on Mr Trump or Mr Trump's campaign. |
| 11 | "I would also point out that all of these things were done before Mr Trump's campaign, if I even did them - which I deny. In any event, this is the problem with politics | politics as usual is wrong." |
| 12 | Nunberg, an associate of veteran operative and Trump adviser Roger Stone, was fired and rehired by Trump in 2014. |
| 13 | His sin then was arranging for BuzzFeed's McKay Coppins to write a profile that Trump disliked. |
| 14 | The controversial Facebook posts, the most recent of which is from 2009, also represent the second time a Trump staffer has come under scrutiny in the past week. |
| 15 | The first was when Michael Cohen, a special counsel for the Trump organization who has frequently appeared on television as a surrogate for the candidate, repeatedly threatened a reporter and insisted spousal rape was legal. |
| 16 | Trump has stood by Cohen, who issued a series of vulgar threats to Tim Mak, a reporter for the Daily Beast. |
| 17 | Trump, who himself has faced increased scrutiny from Democrats in recent days, has led in every national poll of the Republican field since early July. |