Earlier this month the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) revealed that its trademark five-ring logo had been redesigned, and that the new design would be used in marketing and sponsor materials in the future. One potential logo would depict a redesigned American flag with only five stars and five stripes.
The move outraged a handful of right-wing pundits, chief among them Fox News host Sean Hannity, who blasted the decision as an “awful idea.” “Our stars and stripes should be the only flag representing our country at the Olympics and the Paralympics,” Hannity said.
A Fox News article about the Hannity segment also stated that the USOC’s plan was to “redesign the American flag on its logo, and replace the 50 stars with 5 new stars, and alter the portrayal of the stripes.”
However this is not accurate. The current USOC logo also depicts the U.S. flag with fewer than 50 stars — only 13 — because of sizing issues. As noted by the Chicago Tribune in 2016, “it chose to go with the 13-star flag because it would be too difficult to fit 50 stars cleanly onto the cookie-sized emblem.”
Moreover, an altered version of the U.S. flag has appeared in presidential campaign logos without any right-wing backlash:
But that didn’t stop antisemitic End Times pastor Rick Wiles from suggesting that something sinister was afoot.
During the July 14, 2021 episode of his TruNews show, Wiles claimed that the USOC’s logo was redesigned at the behest of the Chinese government — based on the harebrained logic that the new logo and the flag of China both have five stars. Wiles called it a “not so subtle hint that China is in control of the political establishment” of the U.S.
“They’re altering the flag to resemble the Chinese communist flag,” he told his co-hosts.
TruNews co-host Lauren Witzke compared it to the removal of Confederate statues, and said that the Left wants to replace “all this stuff that makes up our American history” with a “Marxist, dystopian, corporate flag-looking thing.” She also claimed that the redesign purposefully “replicates” the Chinese flag.
Another co-host, Doc Burkhart, said that “this reimagination is actually a desecration of the flag.” Rick Wiles replied that it was actually “far more sinister” than that. Wiles said that it’s “another sign we’re being told ‘You’re under occupation. You’ve lost your country. We’ve taken your flag from you!'”
Wiles also predicted that at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, the “communists will be taking the DNA of our athletes in order so that they can produce hybrid superhumans, and to know the DNA of Americans.”
“I don’t like saying this because I know some people are like ‘Should I just get a razor blade and cut my wrists at this point?'” Wiles added. “But the country is finished.” Lauren Witzke then chimed in to claim America has been “conquered” and that “they’re bragging about it.”
Angry White Men 