Members of President-elect Donald Trump’s inner circle have been wearing mysterious triangular pins. The conspicuous badge is an upside-down, triple overlapping, half purple and half gold triangle, which has been puzzling journalists.
According to the New York Post, the gold-rimmed purple triangle identifies Trump’s aides as such to the Secret Service and permits them to enter and exit security zones within Trump Tower as they wish.
Those wearing the pin include appointed White House press secretary Sean Spicer and the senior adviser to the president for policy, Stephen Miller. Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, wears the badge frequently, Vocativ reports, and even sports the insignia in his Twitter profile photo.
The first photographed sighting of a pin-wearing Trump staffer came on Dec. 1, 2015, when Lewandowski wore the pin to a gathering with black pastors.
Trump’s campaign communication director, Hope Hicks, when asked, chose not to explain why Trump staffers wear the insignia.
Other journalists are wondering whether the icon is connected to a secret society.
“Split colors… are common in heraldry, sometimes signifying the union of two lines or families. As to the choice of colors, my guess would be that they tried to allude to the Trump gold logos and some vague association with wealth and royalty in the purple,” she said.
