The abbreviation commonly used for the U.S. Secret Service is USSS, but President Donald Trump used a different abbreviation in a June 11 tweet: SS. And he is being slammed for it on social media, as SS is typically used to describe Adolf Hitler’s notorious Schutzstaffel of Nazi Germany.
In German, Schutzstaffel means “protection squadron.” And in Nazi Germany during the 1930s, Hitler’s paramilitary SS were known for being incredibly vicious.
Trump tweeted, “Our great National Guard Troops who took care of the area around the White House could hardly believe how easy it was. ‘A walk in the park’, one said. The protesters, agitators, anarchists (ANTIFA), and others, were handled VERY easily by the Guard, D.C. Police, & S.S. GREAT JOB!”
In response to that post, legal expert Elie Mystal tweeted, “This man literally just called the Secret Service (USSS) the ‘SS.’ That really just happened.”
Attorney Bradley Moss tweeted, “It’s USSS. Not SS. The SS were Nazis. Please don’t use that acronym ever again when describing the Secret Service.”
The Lincoln Project, a group of anti-Trump conservatives, posted, “The SS? Come on.” And Katie Phang, a legal analysist for NBC News and MSNBC, tweeted, “Did Trump just use ‘the S.S.’ in a tweet?”