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What message about racism does Trump send when he goes to Tulsa? 2:01
(CNN Business) –– Facebook reported Thursday that it cracked down on ads for President Donald Trump's reelection campaign for violating his hate policies. The ads, which attacked what the Trump campaign described as "dangerous crowds of far-left groups," featured an inverted triangle.
The Anti-Defamation League said Thursday that the triangle "is practically identical to the one used by the Nazi regime to classify political prisoners in concentration camps."
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“We removed these posts and advertisements for violating our policy against organized hate. Our policy prohibits using the symbol of a prohibited hate group to identify political prisoners without the context that condemns or disputes the symbol, ”Andy Stone, a Facebook spokesperson, told CNN Business.
The ads targeted the far-left group antifa, and asked Trump supporters to back the president's calls to designate the group as a terrorist organization.
In response to criticism of the announcement, the Trump campaign claimed earlier Thursday that the red triangle was "a symbol widely used by antifa."
According to Facebook's library of political ads, a set of posts with the offensive symbol began airing Wednesday night on Trump's main page on the social network, on the “Team Trump” campaign page, and on the Vice President Mike Pence's Facebook page.
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The paid ad was viewed nearly a million times on the Facebook users' home page by Trump's main profile alone, according to Facebook data.
In a statement, Tim Murtaugh, director of communications for the Trump campaign, insisted that the red triangle is a "symbol used by antifa."
The campaign targeted several T-shirt, sticker and magnet websites that sell products with the symbol.
And Murtaugh added: "We note that Facebook still has an inverted red triangle emoji in use, which looks exactly the same, so it's funny that they only target this ad."
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