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The federal agency responsible for the nuclear arsenal is now tweeting out Breitbart articles

Amplifying the site that brought you a “Black Crime” vertical and pushes Islamophobic fake news stories.

CREDIT: AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon
CREDIT: AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon

The branch of the Department of Defense responsible for the United States’ nuclear arsenal is now tweeting out articles from the same outlet that brought you a “Black Crime” vertical and headlines like, “Gay Rights Have Made Us Dumber, It’s Time to Get Back in the Closet.”

On Wednesday, the US Strategic Command tweeted out a story from Breitbart — “the platform for the alt-right” that was run by Steve Bannon before he started working for Trump last summer. “Alt-right” is a euphemism popularized by Richard Spencer, head of the white supremacist National Policy Institute (NPI), one of the country’s leading contemporary advocates of ideological racism.

The article Strategic Command shared is mostly uncontroversial stenography of a Senate Armed Forces Committee hearing and features comments by Air Force Gen. John Hyten expressing concern about the state of “the nuclear triad” — a term President Trump appeared to be unfamiliar with during the campaign.

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In response to people expressing outrage with Strategic Command’s tweet, the article’s author, Breitbart Pentagon correspondent Kristina Wong, argued it out with critics in the replies.

Wong might not see a problem with Strategic Command’s tweet, but by legitimizing Breitbart, the Department of Defense is normalizing a website that equates feminism with cancer and was recently under fire for running a fake news story about a Muslim mob setting fire to a church in Germany.

The main Breitbart Twitter account trolled users expressing concern about the development with retweets.

The Trump administration cracked down on government social media accounts in late January after the National Park Service retweeted posts indicating Trump’s inauguration crowd size was smaller than Obama’s and the Badlands National Park posted tweets about climate change. A couple days later, ThinkProgress broke news that Department of Energy employees working on a solar program were ordered to not share anything about their work on their private or professional social media accounts.

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Meanwhile, Trump has used his official @POTUS Twitter account to spread lies about the scandal involving his campaign’s contacts with Russian officials.