When it comes to the Trump administration’s personnel decisions, there tends to be a spectrum, ranging from unfortunate to awful. Occasionally, however, there are choices who fall into the you-have-got-to-be-kidding-me category.
Take Darren Beattie, for example. The Associated Press reported:
A senior State Department official who was fired as a speechwriter during President Donald Trump ‘s first term and has a history of incendiary statements has been appointed to lead the embattled U.S. Institute of Peace. The move to install Darren Beattie as the institute’s new acting president is seen as the latest step in the administration’s efforts to dismantle the embattled organization. … The State Department confirmed the appointment in a statement to the Associated Press on Saturday.
This will not be his only job: According to the State Department’s website, Beattie will also continue to be responsible for leading “public diplomacy outreach, which includes messaging to counter terrorism and violent extremism” at the agency.
In case anyone needs a refresher, it was in 2018 — the second year of the president’s first term — when officials in the Trump White House started receiving media calls about Beattie, who was a speechwriter and policy aide at the time. Journalists wanted to know whether Beattie’s colleagues were aware of his role at a conference regularly attended by well-known white nationalists.
Soon after, he was fired.
Eight years later, however, Donald Trump’s standards have evolved; his tolerance for hiring extremists is worse; and Beattie returned to a position of influence: Just two weeks after the president’s second inaugural, Beattie was hired to serve as the undersecretary of state for public diplomacy. NBC News reported in early February:
Beattie has a history of making inflammatory remarks, including a post on X in October that said: ‘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.’ Beattie’s site promoted a baseless theory that the attack on the Capitol was the handiwork of the FBI, or has he put it, a ‘Fedsurrection.’
Unfortunately, the list doesn’t end there. Beattie also spent part of Jan. 6, 2021, telling various Black people — including Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina — to “learn their place” and “take a knee to MAGA.”
CNN had a related report on Beattie’s record, noting that he also praised Dr. James Watson, the founder of modern genetics who later suggested Black people were less intelligent than White people, as the “greatest living American scientist.” Similarly, in 2020, Beattie wrote online, “‘S—hole countries’ was the high-point of Trump’s presidency,” referring to a notoriously racist incident from Trump’s first term.
What’s more, as recently as last year, Beattie voiced support for mass sterilization of “low-IQ trash,” complaining, “Higher quality humans are subsidizing the fertility of lower quality humans.” For good measure, let’s also not forget that Beattie also published since-deleted tweets about Secretary of State Marco Rubio — his current boss — having a “low I.Q.” and possibly being gay. Common sense might suggest that revelations like these would bring Beattie’s State Department tenure to an abrupt end. Instead, he’s received a promotion. It’s a reminder, not only of how much worse the second Trump administration is from the first, but also of the White House’s determination to crush the U.S. Institute of Peace, while signaling to the public that the president doesn’t much mind rewarding those on his team with racist records. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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