I’m bemused at how issues like this (or the death of Peanut the squirrel or the Ohio train derailment) become partisan controversies. Especially concerning the pine tree flag, which in the rest of the country is a symbol of MAGA Christian conservatism.
To the TDS sufferers, who made the positive phrase "Make America Great Again' into an epithet against themselves, they consider the Pine Tree Flag the same thing. They take it personal.
The Pine Tree Flag usually is accompanied by the caption 'An Appeal to Heaven'. That comes from John Locke's Second Treatise on Government, part of the body of knowledge the Founders used in creating this country.
And where the body of the people, or any single man, is deprived of their right, or is under the exercise of a power without right, and have no appeal on earth, then they have a liberty to appeal to heaven, whenever they judge the cause of sufficient moment. And therefore, though the people cannot be judge, so as to have, by the constitution of that society, any superior power, to determine and give effective sentence in the case; yet they have, by a law antecedent and paramount to all positive laws of men, reserved that ultimate determination to themselves which belongs to all mankind, where there lies no appeal on earth, viz. to judge, whether they have just cause to make their appeal to heaven.
Yes, it was, appropriately, used and displayed in the protests of the manipulation and 'Stop the Steal' protests of the 2020 election. The reasoning was that if we could not rely on our representatives in government to do the right thing in this case, we are appealing to heaven to intervene in our behalf.
Of course, as they do with everything, the TDS crowd decided to make the Pine Tree Flag into their own personal swastika.