Trump Supporter Caught Flashing Apparent White Power Sign While Behind President - Forbes

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Topline

A man standing directly behind President Donald Trump at a campaign rally at The Villages in Florida on Friday repeatedly made a hand gesture associated with the white supremacy movement, which coincided with the president making several racially insensitive remarks during his stump speech.

Key Facts

A man wearing a black baseball cap, sunglasses, and no mask, standing over President Trump's left shoulder, made an "OK" hand gesture, touching his thumb and index finger together to create a circle, and held it high in the air at Friday's rally.

This hand gesture "has become a popular gesture used by people across several segments of the right and far-right," according to the Anti-Defamation League.

The movement associated with the gesture, called "Operation O-KKK," was reportedly started on the anonymous message board platform 4chan in 2017.

Neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klansmen and other white nationalists use the gesture in public "to signal their presence and to spot potential sympathizers and recruits," the New York Times reported in 2019.

The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Forbes.

Key Background:

At Friday's rally, Trump repeatedly referenced conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh referring to former President Obama as "Barack Hussein Obama," giving extra emphasis to "Hussein." Trump also warned that "criminals and rapists and even murderers" are immigrating across the southern U.S. border. In June, Trump retweeted a video that included footage of a white man driving a golf cart adorned with Trump campaign posters and flags through shouting "white power," before deleting the tweet roughly four hours later. That footage was filmed at The Villages, the same location which hosted Friday's rally. The president quote-tweeted the video and wrote: "Thank you to the great people of The Villages." The White House did not apologize for the tweet, saying instead: "President Trump is a big fan of The Villages. He did not hear the one statement made on the video." In 2017, a Unite the Right rally was organized by white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia, protesting a Confederate statue's removal. In the violent, race-fueled riots that followed, Trump faced widespread criticism after saying that there were "very fine people on both sides." One of the white power rally's promoters in Charlottesville conspicuously flashed the "OK" hand gesture.

Crucial Quote:

"I am the least racist person in this room," Trump declared during the final presidential debate on Thursday night. "Nobody has done more for the Black community than Donald Trump. And if you look, with the exception of Abraham Lincoln… nobody has done what I've done."

Tangent:

In March of 2019, Brenton Tarrant, the white supremacist accused of killing 50 people in mass shootings at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, smiled and flashed the "OK" sign at a court hearing on his case. Last July, four officers from the Jasper Police Department in Alabama were suspended after making an upside-down "OK" sign with their hands in a post-arrest photograph.