|
| Flynn Jr. in blue tie at Trump tower as part of the transition team |
As Twitter has cracked down on white nationalist accounts in recent weeks, many adherents of the movement have instead started using the social platform Gab, which bans users from engaging in illegal activity but nothing else. As the New York Times recently detailed, the platform — which uses a frog for its logo — “has emerged as a digital safe space for the far right, where white nationalists, conspiracy-theorist YouTubers, and minivan majority moms can gather without liberal interference.” Several white nationalists who have been banned from Twitter — including Milo Yiannopoulos, Richard B. Spencer, and Ricky Vaughn — have resurfaced there.
Flynn Jr.’s Twitter bio actually includes a link to his Gab page. On Gab, Flynn Jr. follows white nationalists and posted that he hopes to convince his dad to switch to the new platform.
On Sunday — the same day he was tweeting about PizzaGate — Flynn Jr. used Gab to praise a racist collage, created by a user to deride Obama’s “so called legacy,” linking Obama to African American criminals and Muslim terrorists.
Flynn Jr.’s bigoted message echoes sentiments that his dad has also expressed on social media.
During an interview with the New York Times late last month, Trump attempted to distance himself from white nationalists, saying, “I don’t want to energize the group, and I disavow the group… I disavow and condemn.”
But with Flynn Sr. poised to become his top adviser on security issues and Flynn Jr. serving in an official role as well — not to mention that Trump’s top strategist is set to be Steve Bannon, the former Breitbart boss who a former colleague said “occasionally talked about the genetic superiority of some people and once mused about the desirability of limiting the vote to property owners” — it’s easy to see why Trump’s disavowal rings hollow.
