'Bar lowered quite a bit': How a Trump appointee went from pariah to prominence

05 February

Back in 2018 during Donald Trump's first presidency, Darren J. Beattie lost a speechwriter position after CNN reported that he had spoken at a 2016 alt-right event where white nationalists were prominently featured. The event was the H.L. Mencken Club Conference.

Beattie, according to the Washington Post, was fired from the first Trump Administration after he refused to resign.

But Beattie is now serving in the second Trump Administration as acting undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs in the U.S. State Department, which is headed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

In an article published by The Bulwark on February 5, libertarian/conservative journalist Cathy Young cites the Beattie appointment as an example of how "low" the second Trump Administration's "standards" are.

"The bar has been lowered quite a bit," Young laments. "It's easy to find examples of things Beattie said that would have been instantly disqualifying for a Republican administration not that long ago…. not from a hoary past, but from a month before the 2024 election."

The Never Trump points to a Beattie tweet from October 4, 2024 in which he wrote, "Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work. Unfortunately, our entire national ideology is predicated on coddling the feelings of women and minorities, and demoralizing competent white men."

Young notes that Beattie once told "two prominent black conservatives — Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina and then-Heritage Foundation president Kay Coles James — that they should 'learn (their) place and take a knee to MAGA.'"

"If one had the stomach for it," Young argues, "one could spend a lot of time exploring the twists and turns in the mind of Darren Beattie. One especially bizarre thing you'd notice: Beattie's posts extolling white men and slamming women and minorities are sometimes inundated by antisemitic taunts — Beattie is Jewish — from people in his own culture-war camp. But what really matters is that someone with Beattie's views got a high-level post in the State Department."

Young continues, "One obvious way to read it is that the second Trump Administration is willing to trample norms — including taboos on overt racism, misogyny and white identity politics — in a way the first one was not. As Trump adviser Steve Bannon told Semafor in a text message, 'The symbolism of his hire by POTUS screams: We Don’t Give 2 F****x’ for convention.' In that sense, Beattie is an excellent fit for the new administration — especially since, like Trump himself, he brings personal grievances to the job."

Cathy Young's full article for The Bulwark is available at this link.

From Your Site Articles