In March 2025, a rumor spread online that U.S. President Donald Trump posted a symbol Nazis used as a badge to identify gay men to his social media platform Truth Social.
Users shared screenshots of the post to Facebook, Reddit and Instagram, where one account captioned the image: "Trump posted this today on truth social. For those that don't know, the pink triangle was a symbol used during Nazi Germany as a 'badge' to identify gay men or trans women in their concentration camps. Since 1970 the LGBT community reappropriated the symbol to symbolize pride & other queer movements" (archived, archived, archived):
(Instagram @allie4tn)
Snopes readers also wrote in to ask us whether Trump had posted such an image to his Truth Social account.
In short, Trump did post a link on Truth Social to an article published on the website of the conservative daily newspaper The Washington Times (archived). The article's feature illustration displays in the preview and depicts a television set with a pink upside-down triangle and an overlaid red symbol, usually taken to mean "not allowed."
Several sources confirm that Nazis did indeed use a pink triangle to identify gay men in concentration camps. Therefore, we have rated this claim as true. It is unknown, however, whether Trump read the article he linked to, or whether he knew what the illustration depicted or symbolized. We have contacted the White House for comment and will update this story if we receive a response.
(Truth Social @realDonaldTrump)
On March 9, 2025, Trump posted — without comment — a link to an opinion piece by Army veteran Jeremy Hunt titled "Army recruitment ads look quite different under Trump." It featured an illustration depicting the pink upside-down triangle and a "no" symbol. We reached out to the artist, Linas Garsys, and will update this story if we get a response.
Hunt's article mentioned the presence of LGBTQ+ people in previous Army recruitment efforts. It compared Biden-era advertisements that showed, for example, an Army officer marching in a pride parade, with an ad from Trump's administration that featured a soldier in the gym lifting weights and "declaring to the camera, 'Stronger people are harder to kill.'" Hunt wrote: "This sea change in advertising style isn't merely about aesthetics; it signals to the world that our military is serious and prepared to fight."
The pink triangle is well-known as a symbol from the Nazi era of World War II. The Arolsen Archives at the International Center on Nazi Persecution, which helps to find missing victims of the Holocaust, acquired a chart from the Dachau concentration camp that detailed which of a range of colored triangles a particular group of prisoners should wear. The archives' website states (archived) homosexual prisoners could be recognized by their pink triangle badges. A blog post (archived) from the Sydney Jewish Museum says prisoners marked with the pink triangle were "systematically ostracised and subject to harsh labour," adding that there is "little survivor testimony" from men who were forced to wear it.
The LGBTQ community began to reclaim the symbol of the pink triangle in the 1970s. The British Holocaust education resource, Holocaust Centre North, says on its blog (archived) that gay rights groups embraced it, adding that in the 1980s, a six-person collective founded a project, Silence = Death, in response to a new threat: the AIDS virus. They inverted the Nazis' symbol, using a pink triangle pointing upward as the logo. This pattern continued at gay rights marches in later decades, as seen below.
Marchers carrying a pink triangle with the words "Never Forget" at the Lesbian and Gay Pride event in London, June 18, 1994. (Getty Images)
Snopes has addressed similar claims about what Trump has posted to his social media platform, including that he called teachers "ugly" on Truth Social and a rumor that a post promised to immediately lower the prices of eggs and gasoline upon his taking office.