It cannot be said too often that Nazis (or, more accurately, "National Socialists") and fascism are leftist creations. They are about statism, not individual liberty.  One of the biggest Big Lies of the American left is to try to tie the Nazis to American conservatism, which is dedicated to less government control, not more.  The latest entry is an obscenely inaccurate USA Today "fact check," tweet, which says it's true that a Trump t-shirt with an eagle is a copy of Nazi imagery.

Not all the blame rests on USA Today's shoulders.  It was doing the "fact check" in response to a claim from Jewish leftists and NeverTrumps asserting that the eagle image was a Nazi image:

President Donald Trump's campaign website recently unveiled a T-shirt that has come under fire because of design similarities between its logo and a Nazi symbol. 

The similarity was first noticed, according to Forward, by two Twitter accounts, Bend the Arc: Jewish Action, described as a Jewish progressive group, and the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group formed by Republicans.

"The President of the United States is campaigning for reelection with a Nazi symbol. Again," Bend the Arc tweeted on July 1.

Several Facebook posts have noted the similarities, as well. One user noted, "Trump is now selling straight up nazi propaganda shirts."

The ignoramuses who made this claim backed it up by showing a Trump shirt (worn by a person of color, no less) next to Nazi imagery:

Image: Facebook.

The USA Today article, after citing to this canard, then quotes the Trump campaign's pushback:

The Trump campaign pushed back hard on this idea.

"This is moronic. In Democrats' America, Mount Rushmore glorifies white supremacy and the bald eagle with an American flag is a Nazi symbol. They have lost their minds," Tim Murtaugh, Trump 2020 communications director, said in an email to USA TODAY.

From there, the article accurately explains that the eagle is a central part of American iconography going back to the nation's founding.  It states, too, that even the Nazis copied the eagle from the Germanic coat of arms.  The article even acknowledges that there are significant differences between Trump's all-American eagle and the Nazi eagle:

In Trump's, the eagle holds the American flag up near its chest; the Nazi symbol holds the swastika lower. Trump's design also features "Trump 2020" below it. The American eagle is also a bald eagle, whereas the Nazi eagle is depicted as an all-black bird.

However, lest these facts clear Trump and his supporters of the Nazi charge, the article also reminds readers that Trump dared to use a triangle in an anti-Antifa ad, which was totally Nazi because the Nazis used triangles to identify various political prisoners.  Again, if one sticks with the article, it includes Murtaugh's accurate pushback:

Murtaugh defended the ad, saying the ad included a "symbol used by Antifa" and noted Facebook included a red triangle emoji. 

"The image is also not included in the Anti-Defamation League's database of symbols of hate. But it is ironic that it took a Trump ad to force the media to implicitly concede that Antifa is a hate group" Murtaugh wrote.

Considering that my "fact check" of the USA Today article says it's accurate, although written in such a way as to fool readers who stop at the first paragraph or skim, why is USA Today so deep in the doghouse?  It's in the doghouse because of the way it buries the truth in a lie.

First, you have the premise of the article, in big, bold print:

(Note: The text in the USA Today article does not have a black frame around it.  I added it here for clarity and did the same below.)

Then, after all the waffling, vaguely accusatory, but ultimately accurate small print discussed above, you get to the conclusion that USA Today really wants, and it has nothing to do with the facts:

How many readers are going to get past that big "TRUE"?  If they do, they'll see the ultimate weasel wording: USA Today says it's true that people are accusing the Trump campaign of using Nazi imagery.  Then, with more weasel wording, it says it's "worth noting" that the eagle symbol is common in U.S. imagery as if that commonality is only tangential to Trump's full-bore Nazism.  The conclusion completely ignores the fact that the Trump imagery, as USA Today itself admitted, is in line with more than 200 years of American iconography.

Nor is this weasel stuff limited to the article. It’s part of the USA Today tweet, too:

What USA Today has done is utterly disgraceful.  Worse, it creates real danger for Trump-supporters.  One of the central precepts of the anti-Trump movement is that Trump and his supporters are Nazis, and USA Today, through duplicitous writing, just added fuel to that fire.

Antifa and other activist organizations have made significant headway with the idea that it's okay to attack "Trump Nazis" physically.  Thus, in 2018, Reason posted a video showing U.C. Berkeley students being asked if it's okay to punch a Nazi.  Many agreed that it's okay to punch a Nazi, and some made it clear that anyone who supports Trump is therefore punchable.

Incidentally, YouTube makes it hard to see this video:

USA Today's horrific, intentionally misleading weasel attack on Trump and his supporters, which calls them Nazis even while squeamishly admitting that they're not, is like waving a red flag before the real fascists — people dedicated to statism and the use of violence to achieve it.

As a public service, here are a few more eagle insignia that the USA Today article might want to have noted. This first image is the front and back of the Great Seal of America:

Here's Nancy Pelosi's seal as speaker of the House of Representatives:

Next, you can see the seal of the president of the United States, which sports a design from 1945 after the U.S. defeated the Nazis.  The design echoes earlier seals going back 100 years:

This is a 1796 United States quarter:

This is an 1871 United States silver dollar:

This is a 2015 United States half-dollar:

Here’s the United States Marines Insignia:

And this is the Navy SEALS insignia:

Franklin Roosevelt's National Recovery Administration, created in 1933, used an eagle, too, before the Supreme Court held that it was unconstitutional:

Hollywood leftists were so in love with the idea of Roosevelt and the NRA that both Roosevelt and the NRA showed up in the amazing, and completely enjoyable, Busby Berkley finale to 1933's Footlight Parade:

1776, which puts to music the lead-up to the Declaration of Independence, had John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin contemplate which bird should symbolize the new country:

And then, of course, there's the eagle's long history in Europe, far pre-dating the Nazis.  The ancient Romans had their imperial eagle:

Napoleon copied the Roman eagle:

St. Stephens Cathedral, the most important church in Vienna, has the imperial eagle on its roof:

(Image: © Bwag/Commons)

And as even the USA Today article noted, pre-Nazi Germany had its eagle, too.  This is the ridiculous 19th-century German Garde du Corps cavalryman's "pickelhaube" (i.e., helmet) eagle:

It is impossible to heap sufficient scorn on USA Today for what it did, but this post at least makes that effort.