Did President Trump post a message on Truth Social that showed a slashed-through upside-down pink triangle symbol that looked like the badge used in Nazi camps to identify those imprisoned as being homosexual? Yes, that's true: The image appeared as the social media preview card when Trump posted a link to a Washington Times opinion piece about military recruitment ads. Over the years the pink triangle has also been symbolically reclaimed by the LGBTQ movement as a liberation and remembrance symbol.
The image appeared in a Truth Social post (archived here) published on Trump's account on March 9, 2025, in a post that just contained a link to a Washington Times opinion article (archived here) written by Jeremy Hunt.
This is what the post looked like:
(Image: screenshot taken by Lead Stories on March 11, 2025 at 8:20:12 UTC)
The opinion piece Trump was linking to commented on recent changes in military recruitment ads and mentioned the disappearance of LGBTQ messaging in them:
A recent 82nd Airborne Division video showed a paratrooper firing a heavy machine gun accompanied by the caption, "We will fight. We will win. We will prevail."
Consider the stark contrast between the military recruitment ads today and those from the Biden era. One of the most famous ads of President Biden's term showcased an Army officer named Emma marching in an LGBTQ pride parade. Though the cartoon ad had much to do with Emma's journey of sexual identity, it had little to do with our military's core mission: to deter, fight and win our nation's wars.
The illustration that accompanied the piece (archived here) was credited "Military recruitment ads illustration by Linas Garsys / The Washington Times." It appeared in Trump's Truth Social post because it was set as the social media thumbnail image for the article. It showed a person in a camouflage suit whose head was replaced by an old television set showing an upside-down pink triangle inside a prohibition sign consisting of a red circle with a slash through it.
AI generated?
Online AI detection tool Hive Moderation determined that the image was 78.2 percent likely "likely to contain AI-generated or deepfake content," as shown in the screenshot below:
(Image source: Hive results obtained by Lead Stories on March 11, 2025 at 8:33:16 UTC)
Origin of the symbol
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum explains the system used to identify prisoners in Nazi camps (archived here), which is where the pink triangle symbol originated:
After 1939 and with some variation from camp to camp, the categories of prisoners were easily identified by a marking system combining a colored inverted triangle with lettering. The badges sewn onto prisoner uniforms enabled SS guards to identify the alleged grounds for incarceration.
Criminals were marked with green inverted triangles, political prisoners with red, "asocials" (including Roma, nonconformists, vagrants, and other groups) with black or--in the case of Roma in some camps--brown triangles. Gay men and men accused of homosexuality were identified with pink triangles.
Multiple meanings
Writing about the symbol, Matt Mullen on History.com (archived here) said:
Before the pink triangle became a worldwide symbol of gay power and pride, it was intended as a badge of shame. In Nazi Germany, a downward-pointing pink triangle was sewn onto the shirts of gay men in concentration camps--to identify and further dehumanize them. It wasn't until the 1970s that activists would reclaim the symbol as one of liberation.
Ellen Caminti discussed the symbol on the website of the National Center for Lesbian rights (archived here):
Throughout the Holocaust, it's estimated that upwards of 15,000 gay men were sent to concentration camps. Inside the camps, they were forced to wear a pink inverted triangle on their uniforms - clearly marking them as LGBTQ. The symbol indicated to everyone in the prison that the wearer was "bottom tier" - and often the wearers would receive harsher treatment. Sadly, 60% of gay men sent to concentration camps were killed.
Now, the pink triangle has been reclaimed in LGBTQ spaces. The triangle - now right side up - serves as a reminder that we cannot allow history to repeat itself. It was prominently used in the 1980s by Act Up Activists as a symbol for their campaign fighting for better treatment of AIDS patients. A pink triangle glows over San Francisco every year during June. Pink triangles are seen on signs and flags at LGBTQ rallies and protests all around the world.
Olivia B. Waxman wrote about it in Time Magazine (archived here):
The brightly colored symbol is now often worn proudly, but it was born from a dark period in LGBTQ history and world history.
Just as the Nazis forced Jewish people to wear a yellow Star of David, they forced people they labeled as gay to wear inverted pink triangles (or 'die Rosa-Winkel'). Those thus branded were treated as "the lowest of the low in the camp hierarchy," as one scholar put it.
