After suffering a set of embarrassing defeats in last year’s elections, Michigan Republicans tapped their worst-performing statewide candidate, Kristina Karamo, to lead them back to relevance in 2024 as state party chair.
Unsurprisingly, however, Karamo—who once accused Beyoncé of spreading paganism and believes demonic possession is “real”—is already doubling down on the far-right rhetoric that doomed her own campaign for Secretary of State in 2022.
Speaking at a party function on May 17, Karamo laughed off concerns about a tweet from the Michigan GOP that invoked the Holocaust to condemn gun control measures, according to audio obtained by The Daily Beast.
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The tweet amplified the popular right-wing argument that the Nazis’ campaign of systematic mass murder was possible because of gun ownership restrictions. On top of an image of wedding rings left behind by murdered Jews, the Michigan GOP tweet reads: “Before they collected all these wedding rings… they collected all the guns.”
Figures in both parties criticized the tweet as an offensive trivialization of the Holocaust; the head of the Republican Jewish Coalition called it “absolutely inappropriate” and called on the Michigan GOP to take it down “immediately.”
In her remarks at the Lincoln Day dinner in Montcalm County, Karamo made clear she did not care about such concerns—even dismissing the continued anger over the tweet “hilarious, completely hilarious.”
“They’re still going on and on about that,” she continued. “‘Are you going to apologize?’ I’m like really, are you guys still going on about this?”
Referencing her identity as a Black woman, Karamo said, “I get this mail and it’s about how I’m encouraging white supremacy and xenophobia all this… I just laugh so hard.”
In her remarks, however, Karamo may have unintentionally laid bare how she, and a significant portion of the party base, views the role of firearms.
“Us being armed is not about stopping a burglar,” she said. “It’s not about hunting. It’s about stopping a tyrannical government. And if you know a thing or two about history, we know that governments have a tendency to be very abusive to the citizenry.”
Mentioning “basic things like history” on several occasions to defend the Holocaust meme, Karamo also depicted Democratic opposition as “very violent” and “Godless people.”
For Michigan Republicans, if their chair’s fringe style prevails, it’ll likely point to more embarrassing defeats in 2024 for a once-proud party organization. That outcome would have national implications: Michigan is not only a crucial battleground in the 2024 presidential race, but will host an open-seat U.S. Senate contest that could help decide the majority in that chamber.
But as Karamo’s career trajectory shows, in today’s GOP, election blowouts are no impediment to personal success for rising MAGA leaders.
After a failed run for local office in 2018, Karamo rose to prominence after serving as a poll watcher in Michigan during the 2020 election and pushing conspiratorial claims of widespread voter fraud and illegal voting.
With a newfound platform, she would go on to claim the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol was a “false flag” operation and to speculate that Michigan was the epicenter of “The Great Reset,” a spinoff COVID conspiracy theory positing that the World Economic Forum fabricated the pandemic to install a global government. Wackier still were her repeated claims that modern concepts like evolution are demonic scams, or that abortion is akin to pagan sacrifice.
Such comments helped Karamo win the GOP nomination for Secretary of State in 2022. After a conspiracy-laden campaign, she lost to Democrat Jocelyn Benson by 14 points, practically a blowout in evenly divided Michigan.
But her ascension to Michigan GOP chair just months later demonstrated that Karamo had figured out the incentive structure of a party reshaped by former President Donald Trump. Pushing all manner of conspiracy theories, she capitalized on the MAGA base’s appetite for more extreme rhetoric and a distrust of institutions above all else—including the imperative to win elections.
As The Daily Beast previously reported, Michigan Democrats have been surprised by the dearth of top-tier Republican recruits in their state. Right-wing media personality Tudor Dixon, the 2022 challenger to Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, lost by nearly 11 points after running a campaign focused much more on culture war issues, such as transgender women in sports, than economic ones such as inflation.
A leaked memo from within the Michigan GOP following the 2022 losses lamented that Dixon had “no statewide operation” and called for changes at the top of the party.
“There were more ads on transgender sports than inflation, gas prices and bread and butter issues that could have swayed independent voters,” the memo stated. “Voters simply didn’t like what Tudor was selling.”
Beyond concerns about Republicans being able to compete statewide, conservatives who have drifted away from the GOP worry the problem runs much deeper.
Once a mighty force and a winning machine, the Michigan GOP is now considered a national bastion of extremism, in a state which was quickly becoming a hotbed of far-right militia activity even before the 2020 election.
“It’s dangerous and it’s concerning, because there’s been some very famous violent actions and threats of violence from some of these militia extremist groups, but we’re seeing not just dotted lines or offshoots, but direct connections between those same groups and the Michigan Republican Party,” said former Michigan GOP chair Jeff Timmer, who’s since become a vehement critic of the party.
Karamo’s rhetoric, Timmer told The Daily Beast, “is becoming very alarming, talking about citizens taking up arms against the government, like we saw on January 6th.”
It’s hardly just the party chair espousing such rhetoric, too—ambitious Michigan GOP hopefuls running elsewhere are, too.
At a June 5 campaign event, Dean Brandt—who lost a bid for the state legislature last year—presented his run for Allegan County Sheriff as a major opportunity for the Michigan Liberty Militia, one of the groups that sent armed members to take over the state capitol in Lansing in 2020 to protest COVID public health restrictions.
Aside from backing the now-mainstream GOP position of arming school teachers, Brandt also said he wants to deputize members of the militia and bring them on to help the sheriff’s office.
When a member of the crowd told Brandt “the sheriff can deputize anybody in his county”—which is not true—the candidate showed his cards.
“That is exactly why I’ve been asked not to use the word militia, because it targets me,” Brandt said, according to audio obtained by The Daily Beast. “Well, guess what? That target [is] standing right here.”
Brandt made it abundantly clear he’s eager to incorporate the militia into formal law enforcement tasks—or tasks well outside their remit—should he get elected to the job.
“I will deputize as many organized militia members as I can. Period,” Brandt said. “As a community watch. That will have a direct line to me. Any unconstitutional shit that hits the fan. Call me.”
The Michigan GOP and the Brandt campaign did not return requests for comment.
“It’s not just lone wolf action,” Timmer said of extremism in Michigan. “It’s becoming part and parcel of what it means to be in the party.”
