A man Ben Smith from Semafor calls a “MAGA Intellectual” (a contradiction in terms) has been tapped for Assisstant Secretary of State:
Beattie has been a vocal critic of broad swathes of American foreign policy and represents a dramatic step away from the establishment Republicanism Rubio long embodied: In a widely-circulated essay on the site he founded, Revolver, Darren Beattie compared the “color revolutions” that Western democracies backed in Eastern Europe in the 1990s and 2000s to “the coordinated efforts of government bureaucrats, NGOs, and the media to oust President Trump.”
Beattie, who has a PhD in political theory from Duke University, where he also taught, was fired in 2018 after attending a conference with white nationalists. He was appointed by Trump in 2020 to a the Commission for the Preservation of American Heritage Abroad, a move that the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, Jonathan Greenblatt, called “outrageous” at the time. (Greenblatt declined to comment Sunday.) The commission works with other governments to preserve sites related to World War II and the Holocaust.
Beattie’s appointment will send another signal that the new administration is rooting itself deeply in the new right.
Ben Smith writes:
“Darren personifies the America First Right — smart, tough, relentless — with a ‘take no prisoners’ attitude. He made Revolver a major player in the frontal attack on the Deep State,” the former Trump adviser Steve Bannon said in a text message. “As important as his agency will be in the building at ‘Foggy Bottom’ , the symbolism of his hire by POTUS screams: ‘We Don’t Give 2 F****x’ for convention.’” The media figure Tucker Carlson called Beattie “decent and genuinely smart” in a text message.
The move offers a glimpse, however, at how Rubio is staffing his department to reassure the MAGA faithful that he’s with the program. Rubio’s director of policy planning is another MAGA intellectual, Michael Anton, whose essay, ”The Flight 93 Election″ made the case for electing Trump in 2016 at any cost.
The so-called “intellectual” Rubio has hired is responsible for this:
He’s nothing more than a Big Lie, white supremacist troll.
