Trump Posted an Article Featuring a Crossed out Pink Triangle, but What Is That?

Over the course of the past decade, Donald Trump has posted plenty of things that are straightforwardly incendiary or offensive. In spite of all that offensive posting, Trump remains the president.

In a recent flurry of Truth Social posts, which included links to lots of articles with favorable coverage of his actions, Trump linked to a post that featured a pink triangle that had been crossed out. Following the news that Trump had done that, many wanted to better understand both what it meant and why it was so controversial. Here's what we know.

To be specific, Trump linked to an article that features the image as its header. The article focuses on the shift in the tone of advertising for the military since Trump took office. According to the article's argument, advertising for the military has become more masculine since Trump took over, and has focused less on inclusion, and specifically on stories of LGBTQ+ members of the military.

The pink triangle caused such controversy because it was a symbol used by Nazis to identify homosexuals in concentration camps. Much in the same way that the Star of David was used to identify Jews, Nazis used pink triangles so that they could easily identify people who were known homosexuals.

It's unclear whether Trump is aware of this history, but it's a symbol with a pretty heavy history.

The cross out over the symbol suggests that, as the article argues, LGBTQ+ people no longer need apply to the armed services. Although it never comes out and directly states this, the article's implicit argument is that the military is not for feminine men anymore. Under Trump, it's a masculine, manly fighting force, and those qualities are — according to this article — not ones that a gay person could possess. It's old-fashioned bigotry of the kind many thought was in the past.

Of course, many of the same men who are so happy that the military is masculine again also get their feelings hurt anytime anyone disagrees with them online. We don't know for sure whether the person who designed the pink triangle image fully understood the history of the symbol they were using, but it seems distinctly possible. Either way, the image is meant to suggest pretty explicitly that the United States military should not be welcoming to gay people.

This is true even though gay people have willingly fought and died for their country for decades. 5.8 percent of the military identifies as LGBTQ+, and they have nevertheless decided to serve their country and put their lives on the line.

The military is at its best when it's an inclusive operation.

Trump and his team want to make it an institution fueled by the patriarchy, one where merit does not determine who gets what posting. The pink triangle might or might not be a conscious symbol of these efforts, but it's a perfect representation of what they want to do either way.