Some people online have suggested that President Donald Trump might have used a speech to US military leaders yesterday to send a coded message to some seriously bad people.
Of course, whether or not this is true or not is totally up for debate, but there are a few facts about it that don’t add up.
That applies to both sides of the debate, but we'll take a closer look anyway.
Donald Trump addressed military leaders in Quantico, Virginia
Yesterday, Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth addressed a group of senior military officials in Quantico, Virginia, during a hastily convened meeting. Hegseth made a speech that called for an end to ‘woke’ practises in the military, calling for troops to be made fitter, taking aim at a few targets including female members of staff, ‘men in dresses’, and even armed forces members with beards.
Some of his comments were not well received and even prompted one ex-military figure say that he’d broken an unwritten rule.
In Trump’s typically bizarre speech he claimed that there are ‘two N words’ - the second one is nuclear, by the way - and even found time for a dig at ex-POTUS Joe Biden, as he often likes to do.
One particular thing that caught someone’s eye was a claim that he made about there having been ’11,488 murders allowed into our country by this guy [Biden] who had no clue.”
However, that number rang a few bells with some people online, and even led to calls that he was sending a coded message to Nazis.
You see, ’88’ is often used in Nazi circles to mean ‘Heil Hitler’ and ’14’ can be used to mean the ’14 words’ which is an infamous white supremacist credo.
One person even went as far as to claim: “There is no other reason for this random number being in the speech.”
It’s tenuous, at best.
Another said: “That's 100% intentional, that's 100% a dog whistle.”
This claim is highly dubious, but that’s the internet for you
A lot of people quickly lined up to call the original poster ‘delusional’ and to point out that there is another ‘1’ in the number that is unaccounted for, and - honestly - is anyone really having Trump send out coded messages anyway?
However, the number Trump used doesn’t appear to mean anything either.
In April, he referred to 11,088 murderers that had come into the US, although that figure is also seemingly inaccurate.
In fact, there is no consensus on exactly what Trump was talking about - but it probably wasn’t intended to mean anything more than what he said.
That didn’t stop some people online for reading into it though, but that’s the internet for you, isn’t it?