https://newrepublic.com/post/196029/trump-official-ties-kremlin-russian-propaganda-state
Darren Beattie dismantled a key agency fighting Russian propaganda. There’s a reason why.
Senior State Department staffer Darren Beattie, a passionate Putin supporter behind the move to dismantle a key agency fighting Russian propaganda, is married to a Russian woman whose uncle is a longtime Kremlin ally, according to The Telegraph.
Yulia Kirillova grew up in Moscow, studied abroad in North America, and married Beattie in 2021 in Florida. She moved to D.C. in January. Her uncle Sergei Cherniko is a drinks magnate who had an estimated net worth of $150 million in 2005. That year, he served in Russia’s ministry of natural resources and was then deputy governor of Siberia’s Nenets region. Cherniko later served in Putin’s civic chamber from 2008 to 2010.
The relationship raises even greater scrutiny around Beattie’s April decision to eliminate the Global Engagement Center, a State Department office tasked with dealing with Russian disinformation campaigns. Beattie has been a staunch supporter of Putin, setting himself apart from the traditional conservative right in Bannon-esque fashion.
“US gov’t has been supporting Ukranian neo-nazi groups in its obsessive proxy war against Russia,” he wrote on X in 2022.
“State Department could sell butt plugs and forward proceeds to fund resistance effort in ukraine,” he wrote again that year. “Iran Contra but with a modern American twist.”
“A big part of American ruling class’ hatred of Russia is that Russia is a major power that rejects the woke ideology at the core of American regime,” he wrote in 2021.
This is a clear conflict of interest that is extremely typical within the Trump administration. And on top of that, Beattie was initially fired from the Trump administration in 2018 for attending a white nationalist conference. He has a long history of many other deeply problematic views.
“Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work,” Beattie wrote on X in October. “Unfortunately, our entire national ideology is predicated on coddling the feelings of women and minorities, and demoralizing competent white men.” On January 6, 2021, he spent the day on X warning Senator Tim Scott, “BLM,” Ibram X. Kendi, and Kay Cole James to “learn their places” and “take a knee” to MAGA.
That, on top of this personal in at the Kremlin, is highly questionable behavior for a ranking official, which has been overly normalized by this administration.
Pete Hegseth’s Garbage New Press Secretary Is as Extreme as They Come
Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson has troubling views when it comes to just about every topic.
The Pentagon’s new press secretary is a chronically online 26-year-old white nationalist who believes in the “great replacement” theory, thinks Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskiy is an “entitled midget,” and pushed an antisemitic conspiracy theory about Leo Frank, a Jewish man who was lynched after being falsely accused of murder in 1915.
Kingsley Wilson, who has served as deputy press secretary since January, is the daughter of right-wing talking head and former Trump adviser Steve Cortes and previously worked for Center for Renewing America, a think tank founded by Project 2025 architect Russel Vought. She will now act as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s primary mouthpiece at the Pentagon, a department that has not had regular press briefings for some time now.
“The Office of the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs is announcing that Kingsley Wilson will serve as Press Secretary for the Department of Defense,” senior Defense Department adviser Sean Parnell wrote on X last week. “Kingsley’s leadership has been integral to the DOD’s success & we look forward to her continued service to President Trump!”
Wilson’s personal X page is a treasure trove of ultraright-wing content.
“Minneapolis became Mogadishu in 10 years time,” she said over a video of Muslim Representative Ilhan Omar at a rally in her district. “The Great Replacement isn’t a conspiracy theory … it’s reality.”
She has posted about the great replacement therory—a racist conspiracy theory that alleges there is a coordinated plot to decrease America’s white population through immigration, in some iterations at the behest of Jewish leaders—incessantly for the past three years.
She said, “I hate this entitled midget,” in response to Zelenskiy receiving military aid from the U.S last year, and lauded Russian President Vladimir Putin for having “encyclopedic knowledge of his people’s history,” which she called “beyond impressive … especially when contrasted with the low-IQ lunatics working at the U.S. State Department.”
“Leo Frank raped & murdered a 13-year-old girl. He also tried to frame a Black man for his crime,” she wrote on X. “The ADL turned off the comments because they want to gaslight you.” The ADL stated that they were “deeply disturbed” by Wilson’s comments.
While troubling, this is a predictable pick, as Trump has lined his highest ranks with fringe MAGA loyalists with often openly racist politics, like State Department official Darren Beattie and National Counterterrorism Center head Joe Kent. They, like Wilson, are anti-neocons who subscribe to the same far-right, deep-MAGA views as figures like Steve Bannon and Peter Thiel, rather than the more conventional conservatism of the GOP.
Trump Officials Leave Out One Key Detail on Colorado Attack Suspect
Trump and his team keep saying the suspect behind the Boulder, Colorado, attack was here illegally. But was he?
Trump officials claim the suspect behind Sunday’s attack in Boulder, Colorado, was in the United States illegally. But they’re leaving out one convenient detail: He had filed an asylum application.
Mohamed Sabry Soliman, an Egyptian national, has been charged with a federal hate crime for attacking peaceful demonstrators calling for the release of Israeli hostages held captive in Gaza, leaving eight people injured.
According to the Department of Homeland Security, Soliman entered the country on a B-2 tourist visa in August 2022. He filed for asylum the next month, and his visa expired the following year.
Donald Trump and his entire administration seem to have seized on the expired visa as proof that an “illegal” immigrant committed such a heinous crime.
“He came in through Biden’s ridiculous Open Border Policy, which has hurt our Country so badly,” said Trump in his own statement on Monday, conveniently ignoring that Soliman entered the country on a tourist visa. “This is yet another example of why we must keep our Borders SECURE, and deport Illegal, Anti-American Radicals from our Homeland.”
“The Colorado Terrorist attack suspect, Mohamed Soliman, is illegally in our country,” DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said.
“There’s certainly a concern that the previous administration allowed way too many terrorists and illegal immigrants into the interior of our country,” said White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt. “This individual, this terrorist, was allowed into the country by the previous administration, was foolishly given a tourist visa, and then was illegally allowed to stay.”
But each of these statements seems to be obfuscating the truth: If you file for asylum, you are not here illegally until a judge denies that request. Until then, you have a pending asylum application.
“He entered the country in August 2022 on a B2 visa that expired on February 2023. He filed for asylum in September 2022,” McLaughlin said on X on Monday.
But what happened next? If his asylum application was denied and he stayed anyway, why wouldn’t she say so?
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