Welcome to Rabbit Hole, a breaking news analysis that helps you get smart on the one story everyone’s obsessing over—for Beast Inside members only.
President Trump has given plenty of winks and nods to white nationalist militants in just two short years of his presidency.
Those disturbingly cordial relationships have left many wondering whether Trump’s tone could have fueled the radicalization of the Pittsburgh terrorist who murdered 11 Jewish congregants at a synagogue on Saturday. But Trump is hardly the only member of the GOP who’s gotten uncomfortably close to right-wing extremists in recent years. Here’s a list of Republicans who have had their own close encounters of the white nationalist kind.
ADVERTISEMENT
Rep. Steve King (R-IA): He’s endorsed Faith Goldy, a Toronto mayoral candidate whose career as an alt-right political pundit included giving an interview to the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer and praising the writing of noted anti-Semites like Richard Spencer. When not endorsing international white nationalists, King tweets out similar sentiments of his own. “We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies,” he said in one missive, which earned him a gentle chiding from House Speaker Paul Ryan. He’s also approvingly tweeted out content from an avowed neo-Nazi and a Swedish white nationalist decrying immigration and bristling at criticism that he’s racist. Despite criticism from anti-hate groups like the Anti Defamation League, King remains unapologetic and has refused to delete his offending tweets.
Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-FL): DeSantis markets himself as a Trump true believer in the hope that it can to win him a term in the Florida governor’s mansion. And like Trump, DeSantis has grown close to anti-Muslim activists and spoke at the annual Restoration Weekend organized by David Horowitz alongside white nationalist former Breitbart contributor Milo Yiannopoulos. Horowitz, who has claimed “this country’s only serious race war is against whites” is best known for his anti-Muslim activism and earned the label “the godfather of the modern anti-Muslim movement” from the Southern Poverty Law Center. DeSantis also came under fire from his Democratic opponent, Andrew Gillum, for keeping a large donation from a wealthy contributor who called President Obama the n-word and for robocalls supporting DeSantis’ gubernatorial campaign from an Idaho neo-Nazi group. DeSantis has disavowed the group behind the robocalls and said he can’t be held responsible for “every single statement” someone like Horowitz makes.
Rep. Tom Garrett (R-VA): Five months before the infamous Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, organized by Jason Kessler, a group run by the white nationalist activist posted a selfie of Kessler and Garrett in his Washington, D.C., congressional office. “We had a very productive meeting today with Congressman Tom Garrett. We talked RAISE Act and Stop Arming Terrorists: 2 great bills we support,” Kessler wrote in a Facebook post. The RAISE Act, introduced by Sens. Tom Cotton (R-AR) and David Perdue (R-GA), would dramatically reduce legal immigration to the U.S., and the Stop Arming Terrorists Act, introduced by Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI), would outlaw U.S. arms to jihadist groups like al Qaeda and ISIS—already prohibited under U.S. law.
In a Fox Business Network interview after the murder of Heather Heyer at the Charlottesville rally in August 2017, Garrett condemned Kessler as a racist and said, “I wish he’d never showed up to begin with” in Charlottesville. As for why Garrett met with Kessler, “That’s what we do. We meet with people all the time. I had no idea who he was in March.”
Rep. Dave Brat (R-VA): In 2015, Brat proudly tweeted out an endorsement of his amendment to deny the DREAMers, undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children, the ability to serve in the military. One slight problem: As Media Matters pointed out, the endorsement came from VDARE, a white nationalist, anti-immigration group named after Virginia Dare, the first white child born in America. The site regularly hosts racist, anti-Semitic, and anti-immigrant pieces. Nonetheless, Brat has not deleted the tweet from his account since publishing it three years ago.
Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ): Gosar had dinner with Filip DeWinter, a white nationalist Belgian politician, formerly of the banned far-right Vlaams Blok party, according to CNN’s KFILE. DeWinter, now a member of the Vlaams Belang party, calls for “a white Europe” and crusades against immigration and Muslims. Gosar met DeWinter at a rally for Tommy Robinson, a British white nationalist and former member of the fascist British National Party. Robinson’s plight became a cause célèbre among right-wing extremists after he was convicted of breaching the peace for live-streaming outside the trial of a group of South Asian men charged with grooming underage girls. “I don’t vouch for and need not vouch for anyone else’s thoughts, comments or actions,” Gosar told CNN when asked about the meeting.
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL): When the diminutive, ginger-bearded alt-right founding father Chuck Johnson showed up in the gallery at Trump’s 2018 State of the Union speech, reporters were shocked. In addition to being a notorious troll, Johnson ran a crowdfunding platform used by neo-Nazis, denied the Holocaust, and ran the alt-right conspiracy outlet Gotnews. How did someone like Johnson get a seat in the gallery? Gaetz gave Johnson a ticket. Gaetz told The Daily Beast at the time that he had no idea who Johnson was and merely handed over a ticket when he showed up in Gaetz’s congressional office. Johnson claimed Gaetz had invited him before shifting his explanation to “I’ll go with whatever version Gaetz says because I’m not a gangster rapper.”
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA): Gaetz is not only the Republican congressman Johnson has gotten into trouble. Two months before Johnson’s State of the Union appearance, the Anti-Defamation League demanded that Rohrabacher publicly condemn Johnson after the Los Angeles Times reported that the congressman had invited the alt-right troll to a meeting with Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) to discuss a potential presidential pardon of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. In a letter to Rohrabacher, the group said, “It is an insult to the memories of those killed in the Holocaust and to the Jewish community to bring a Holocaust denier to the hall of the United States Congress” and asked the California Republican to “discontinue any association with Johnson and repudiate his views.” Rohrabacher denied inviting Johnson and wrote that Johnson had “showed up uninvited to a meeting with Senator Paul” and “was allowed to sit in, only in the sense that no one said no and told him to go.” While Rohrabacher appeared happy to repudiate Johnson’s views on the Holocaust, the congressman couldn’t quite bring himself to discontinue association. “I welcome his support on those issues of agreement and oppose those ideas on which we disagree,” he wrote.
Chris McDaniel, Mississippi Republican candidate for U.S. Senate: McDaniel, a state senator, has launched an insurgent campaign to win retiring Republican Thad Cochran’s seat in the Senate. Before McDaniel was a state senator, he hosted a talk radio show in Mississippi. Among the host’s “Favorite Websites” listed on a site for the show found by CNN was one for the League of the South, which the Anti-Defamation League calls a “white supremacist group that advocates for southern secession and an independent, white-dominated South.” A McDaniel staffer told CNN that the candidate “has never endorsed the League of the South and has nothing to do with them.”
Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp: The Georgia Republican gubernatorial hopeful is another entrant in the awkward selfie sweepstakes. On Oct. 15, Kemp posed for a grinning, thumbs-up picture with James K. Stachowiak, who was sporting a Trump hat and a T-shirt that read “Allah is not God and Mohammad is not his prophet.” Stachowiak, a convicted felon, is notorious for showing up armed at protests and menacing those nearby at places like the 2016 GOP convention and an anti-Muslim rally he organized at the Georgia Capitol. Stachowiak has been banned from social media platforms for his violent and hateful posts. In one video, he references a 2016 riot in Milwaukee after a policeman shot and killed a black man. “I don’t care if they’re women or children, anyone coming out of the store should be shot on sight,” he says. A Kemp spokesperson told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “It’s ridiculous to think he should be held responsible for the beliefs of every person who wants to snap a picture with him.”
Corey Stewart, Virginia Republican candidate for U.S. Senate: Corey Stewart has offered white nationalists and the alt-right the most open embrace of any Republican nominee for national office. Stewart, an avowed admirer of the Confederacy who followed the leader of the neo-Confederate League of the South on Twitter, socializes with a number of white nationalist hate leaders. He attended a rally with Unite the Right organizer Jason Kessler to protest the removal of a Confederate statue. Stewart endorsed white nationalist anti-Semite Paul Nehlen in his bid to unseat House Speaker Paul Ryan even after Nehlen tweeted praise for the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville. Stewart also hired Noel Fritsch, a former aide to Nehlen who tweeted out Pizzagate conspiracy content, as a campaign aide but fired him in the face of mounting public scrutiny.
