'Much more extreme': JD Vance’s newest advisor exposed over ties to 'insurgent far right'

28 August 2024

Since being chosen as Donald Trump's presidential running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) has been deluged with criticism from Democrats as well as from Never Trump conservatives. Much of it has been in response to his widely reported "childless cat ladies" comments from 2021 and 2022, but his ties to Project 2025 and others on the far right have also been a source of scrutiny.

In a report published on August 28, The Guardian's Jason Wilson details the links between Vance, his press secretary Parker Magid and the far-right Claremont Institute.

Founded in 1979, Claremont was once a mainstream conservative think tank that championed the late Sen. Barry Goldwater's (R-Arizona) ideas. But in recent years, Claremont has taken a far-right MAGA turn and openly embraced conspiracy theorists and election deniers like attorney John C. Eastman.

"Parker Magid was recently appointed as Vance's press secretary and his employment history links Vance and his circle to elements of the extremist right far outside the mainstream of American politics," Wilson explains. "Vance's staffer links him to Beck & Stone (B&S) and its subsidiary political consultancy Knight Takes Rook (KTR). The brand consultancy with a business address in New York is close to Vance allies, including the far-right Claremont Institute, the serial Arizona political candidate Blake Masters and the 'counter-revolutionary' magazine IM–1776."

The Guardian reporter continues, "B&S was founded in 2014, according to statements by its founders, Andrew Beck and Austin Stone. Initial company filings in Florida date from April 2015. Its current Florida filings give an address that is a UPS store in New York City."

Wilson notes that Beck "is closely involved with the Society for American Civic Renewal (SACR), a secretive invitation- and men-only fraternal lodge that has been the subject of extensive previous reporting in the Guardian."

Beth Daviess of Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey has been researching SACR and described their views as "much more extreme than mainstream conservatism."

SACR, according to Daviess, has been expressing troubling views on "whether government should be democratic at all."

"The link is just one of a series of connections between Vance and the so-called 'new right,' an anti-democratic movement that attacks feminism, racial equality and immigrants while centering the grievances of white men," Wilson reports. "Those connections were dramatized in an April 2023 photo resurfaced last month in which Vance posed with the staff of New Founding, a B&S-aligned venture capital firm 'for the right' that opposes what it calls “woke capital."

Read The Guardian's full report at this link.

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