What appears as a typical Trump maneuver, retweet something praising himself for all the bigly things he’s accomplished since taking office, takes a subtle twist at the end–a retweet of a White Supremacist logo used by the white supremacist group, VDARE, in 2016.
The image is a red and blue lion’s head inside a circular blue band dotted with stars. At first blush, the log appears benign but it was used by a Dutch Twitter account suspended for promoting White Supremacy.
According to Mediaite, Dustin Giebel and former Snopes Managing Editor Brooke Binkowski revealed the similarity via a series of tweets:
A group calling itself the “Lion Guard.” also uses the logo. Lion Guard regularly quotes Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini and “was established to ensure the safety and security of #Trump supporters by exposing Far-Left infiltrators and saboteurs,”
In 2016, candidate Trump retweeted a quote from Mussolini but did not attribute it to the fascist dictator. However, the quote was originally posted by one of the Lion Guard’s members, ‘ilduce2016,’
The creator of the video, @some3thingwicked, claimed on Twitter he had no clue what the symbol stood for or what fascist hate groups used it in the past to promote their hate. Instead, the creator blamed Google for his lapse in judgement. The tweet has since been removed.
The video also features a bull with swinging testicles to represent Trump’s ‘huevos.’ It’s shown behind a graphic of Dow Jones’s closing number on July 15, 2019. The DOW has dropped about 1,000 points since then.
Mediaite reached out to the Trump campaign for comment:
The Trump campaign has responded with the following statement: “The president shared an independently-produced video that highlighted the strengths of the economy his policies have created. Any conspiracy connected to white supremacy exists only in the fevered minds of reporters who will believe anything negative about the President.”
