US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has censured the media over attacking him for the use of a “Sheriff’s star” next to a picture of his Democrat rival, Hillary Clinton.

Trump posted his meme on Twitter Saturday, which featured Clinton next to the six-sided star bearing the words “Most Corrupt Candidate Ever!” with piles of $100 bills in the background.

However, the image, assumed as a reference to the Star of David on the Israeli flag, was replaced with a circle less than an hour after it was posted by the Trump team.

The move caused controversy on social media and gave US media outlets the chance to allocate more airtime to the real estate tycoon.

Trump finally said Monday that what was meant by the star was a representation of a sheriff’s badge or a “plain star” not a Star of David.

“Dishonest media is trying their absolute best to depict a star in a tweet as the Star of David rather than a Sheriff's Star, or plain star!” the business mogul tweeted.

The image had been shared on a neo-Nazi web forum called /pol/ on June 22 with a link to an archived version of a /pol/ page, however, the page has been updated and the image has been removed.

"Donald Trump's use of a blatantly anti-Semitic image from racist websites to promote his campaign would be disturbing enough, but the fact that it's a part of a pattern should give voters major cause for concern," the presumptive Democratic nominee, said in a statement Monday.

In an interview Monday, Ed Brookover, a senior adviser to Trump, said the campaign felt it had "corrected" the controversy over the star by deleting Trump's original tweet.

"These images get posted and reposted and reposted on social media on many forums," Brookover said. "There was never any intention of anti-Semitism."