Authorities say a 19-year-old Missouri man with a Nazi flag in the truck crashed a U-Haul into security barriers near the White House late Monday night. The Nazi flag that authorities say he had with him was later photographed unfurled on the ground near the truck. He could face multiple charges, including threatening to hurt the president.
Trump Jr. wrote, “If the threat of white supremacy is so real, why do they have to outsource all the hate?”
Donald Trump Jr., the son of the former president, soon retweeted a post that expressed skepticism about the official version of events and added more skepticism of his own. He said of federal law enforcement, “You would think … they would be able to do a much better job at creating fake crimes and fake hate.” Later, in a tweet that drew attention to the suspect’s Indian name, Trump Jr. wrote, “If the threat of white supremacy is so real, why do they have to outsource all the hate?”
That wasn’t the first time we’ve seen Trump Jr. accusing federal authorities of exaggerating the white supremacist threat. Last Saturday, after about a hundred members of the white nationalist group Patriot Front marched in Washington, Trump Jr. suggested the marchers were all feds: “Do we really want to pretend it’s not a fed operation?” he asked on a podcast. He was preaching to the choir of conspiracy theorists across platforms that echoed similar sentiments. Popular podcaster Joe Rogan joked with guest Matt Taibbi that the marchers had to be federal agents because, he said, there were no “fat people” among them.
Those high-profile people weren’t alone. In fact, claiming that federal authorities are falsely connecting crimes to white supremacists has become a trend. Almost as fast as the Secret Service descended on the man in the U-Haul, far-right MAGA followers launched a counteroffensive against any implication that the driver was one of theirs. We’re in an interesting moment when followers and close…
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