White House Intern Accused of Making 'White Power' Salute

A White House intern was caught making what some are calling a white supremacist salute during a November photo op, but he denies that the gesture had racist implications.

Jack Breuer, an Emory University graduate who interned with presidential adviser Stephen Miller this fall, made the hand gesture while other interns in the picture gave a thumbs-up signal. The gesture "is said to depict the letter 'W' with the outstretched middle, ring and little fingers, and a 'P' with the circle made by the thumb and forefinger stretching down to the wrist," reports the U.K.'s Daily Mail, which broke the story Thursday, after the photos were sent to interns shortly before Christmas. The letters stand for "white power."

White nationalist Richard Spencer has been seen making the gesture, as has right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, the Mail notes. Attendees as a far-right rally last summer in Charlottesville, Va., also used it.

Breuer insists, however, that he was simply trying to make an "OK" signal that is used by Donald Trump, and he said he has no sympathy for racist groups, individuals, or ideologies. "In some of our intern pictures, I emulated the OK sign the President sometimes makes. That was foolish. I should have listened more closely to the Commander-in-Chief and given the thumbs up," he told The Daily Caller, a conservative site, in a statement he also posted on his Twitter page. "I'm proud of my Jewish heritage and strongly reject the hateful views associated with racist white power organizations. I would never make common cause with them."

The Anti-Defamation League, which fights racism and anti-Semitism, has said the gesture is not actually a white supremacist salute but was popularized by the discussion board 4chan in an effort to confuse the public. "If someone presents you with a symbol and says it is the big new white supremacist symbol, you should be appropriately skeptical," Mark Pitcavage, a senior research fellow at the ADL's Center on Extremism, said in May.

But the Forward, a publication focusing on Jewish issues, warned that not all who used the gesture have benign intentions. "Though the gesture started as an elaborate internet hoax, or troll, concocted by users of the anonymous internet forum 4chan, it now has taken on a life of its own as a kind of shibboleth for white nationalists and their far right sympathizers," the publication notes.