President Donald Trump has appointed a former speechwriter who was fired from his prior administration after attending a white nationalist event to a top position in the State Department.
Darren Beattie will serve as the acting undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, CNN reported Monday. The role would see Beattie helping to lead “America’s public diplomacy outreach, which includes messaging to counter terrorism and violent extremism,” according to the State Department.
Beattie was fired from his role as a White House speechwriter in 2018 after it emerged that he had attended a white nationalist event in 2016. He had appeared on a panel with British white nationalist Peter Brimelow at a conference in Baltimore.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights group that tracks extremism, called the conference a gathering of “white nationalists and pseudo-academic and academic racists.”
Beattie has also openly promoted Nick Fuentes, a white supremacist who has espoused his “love” for Nazi Germany’s Adolf Hitler. And in October, Beattie wrote on X that white men should be in charge.
“Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work,” Beattie posted. Unfortunately, our entire national ideology is predicated on coddling the feelings of women and minorities, and demoralizing competent white men.”
And in a deleted post from 2020, Beattie appeared to defend notorious pedophile Jeffery Epstein while attacking William Barr, Trump’s former attorney general.
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“I have more respect for Jeffrey Epstein than for Bill Barr,” Beattie wrote in the now-deleted post. “At least Epstein wasn’t a pussy.”
It would require Senate confirmation for Beattie to officially become the undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs.