An army lieutenant has been suspended and an investigation has been launched after the military man posted a video on social media in which he joked about the Holocaust.
2nd Lt. Nathan Freihofer, a field artillery officer with nearly 3 million followers on TikTok, was suspended and an investigation was announced by the 3rd Infantry Division on Monday afternoon, which was first reported by Task and Purpose. In the recently uploaded video, he jokingly asked what a “Jewish person’s favorite Pokemon character is,” and he then answered, “Ash.”
“Hey, if you get offended, get the f— out,” Freihofer said after laughing. “It’s a joke.”
The 3rd Division also said in a statement that “the statements made in the video are not indicative of the values we live by, and there is no place for racism or bigotry in our Army or our country.”
The U.S. military banned TikTok from cellphones in early January, citing national security concerns given that the platform is owned by Chinese internet technology company ByteDance. The Trump administration has repeatedly warned about the security concerns given ByteDance’s potential ties to the Chinese Communist Party, and President Trump issued an executive order in July that would ban the platform within the country unless they sell the social media platform’s U.S. operations.
