A new Dept. of Homeland Security report just leaked to The Washington Post proves it’s “absurd” that the Trump campaign is using a Nazi symbol and attacking Antifa, says a former DHS official.
“This document shows that the government itself does not view antifa as a significant threat in the homeland,” Juliette Kayyem, who was Assistant Secretary for Intergovernmental Affairs at DHS, tells the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent. Kayyem reviewed the document, which Sargent says he “obtained from a congressional source.”
On Thursday Facebook was forced, only after multiple news reports and online outrage, to remove a Trump campaign ad and Facebook post that featured a Nazi symbol once used to identify political prisoners, as a symbol for Antifa. The Facebook ads, which were also posted by President Donald Trump’s own page and Vice President Pence’s page, were reportedly viewed nearly 1.5 million times.
The Trump campaign defended using the symbol, an inverted red triangle that was also used to identify “Social Democrats, liberals, Freemasons and other members of opposition parties,” The Post had reported Thursday.
“The document shows how absurd the Trump campaign’s justification for using the symbol really is,” Kayyem added. “It undercuts their defense.”
What was the Trump campaign’s defense?
“The red triangle is an antifa symbol,” Tim Murtaugh, a spokesman for the Trump campaign, told The Post, “pointing to examples of iPhone cases and water bottles branded with the insignia.”
The campaign actually pointed to this exact graphic from an online tee shirt shop as “proof” – their only proof – the red triangle is an Antifa symbol, which it is not.