Following the confirmation of Marco Rubio as Secretary of State, the Trump administration tapped Darren Jeffrey Beattie, an individual who has expressed racist views and has ties to white nationalist groups, to join the department, where he holds a top role as acting Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs.
Clearly, the Trump administration was not bothered by the fact that just weeks before the November 2024 election, Beattie tweeted that “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 has also been an outspoken believer in conspiracy theories about the January 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection, but these extremist views had no effect on his eligibility for a post at the White House.
According to recent reporting by NOTUS, Beattie has “played a key role in winding down” the Global Engagement Center, a program designed to counter foreign disinformation that had drawn criticism from Republicans who claimed it targeted far-right voices within the United States. By mid-April 2025, the New York Times reports that approximately 40 employees who tracked disinformation from China, Russia, Iran, and terrorist groups were placed on administrative leave — a first step toward their termination. In February, it was reported that free speech attorney Sarah Rogers was to permanently fill Beattie’s role, though the status of her Senate confirmation is unclear, and Beattie remains in his role.
Beattie had previously posted disparaging tweets about Rubio, revealing an undercurrent of personal animosity toward his current superior, including posts that questioned Rubio’s intelligence with “low IQ” accusations and spread unfounded rumors about the Secretary’s sexuality — referencing baseless claims about “Wainwright Park” and foam parties at gay nightclubs. This awkward power dynamic epitomizes the ideological tensions within Trump’s State Department, where former critics now navigate the delicate choreography of serving alongside those they once publicly ridiculed.
This is not the first time that Beattie has been in government. As GPAHE has previously reported, Beattie joined the first Trump administration as a speechwriter for Stephen Miller, Trump’s chief advisor on immigration, who is now Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy. Beattie was forced out in August 2018 due to revelations that he had participated in a conference organized by white nationalists.
The event in question was a conference organized by the H.L. Mencken Club in 2016, a group which describes itself as a meeting place for “independent-minded intellectuals and academics of the Right.” The Mencken Club is known for organizing events with some of the most influential white nationalist figures in the United States. At that event, Beattie participated in a panel discussion with Peter Brimelow, a longtime white nationalist who ran the anti-immigrant website VDare. Another panelist was Paul Gottfried, who coined the term “alt-right” and has long attended white nationalist events, while the racist activist Richard Spencer was also reported to have been present.
At that event, Beattie railed against “imported masses from the developing world,” a vague reference to the white nationalist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory that argues political elites are secretly organizing a “replacement” of the native white population. He also referred to “cultural Marxists” and “corporate Marxists” who “resent the bourgeois for preventing the natural progression toward a system like Brazil,” where “a vanishingly small wealthy, gated, insulated elite lords it over hordes of easily controlled helots.” These terms point to a conspiratorial belief that envisions advocates for a multicultural society being secret “Marxists” who seek to sow division and overthrow the government.
After being forced out in Trump’s first term, Beattie briefly served as an advisor to Representative Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) in 2019 before being nominated by Trump to join the Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad on November 17, 2020. The commission is an independent agency set up by the U.S. Government that works to secure the preservation of historical sites in Europe associated with the heritage of U.S. citizens, including sites tied to the Holocaust. Given his past associations, Beattie’s appointment led to an outcry from civil rights groups. Beattie remained in the position, which has a three-year term, until January 14, 2022, when then-President Joe Biden sent him a letter asking him to resign by the end of the day or face removal.
Beattie has stated, against all evidence, that nothing he said at the Menken conference was racist or offensive. But he has made many similar racist comments over the years. On December 12, 2020, Beattie tweeted that “‘Shithole countries’ was the high-point of Trump’s presidency,” a reference to racist, degrading comments Trump made in January 2018 referring to Haiti and African countries. He has praised James Watson, the founder of modern genetics, who shamefully and inaccurately suggested at one point that Black people were less intelligent than white people. When Taylor Swift shared a tweet on June 12, 2020, opposing Confederate monuments in her state of Tennessee, Beattie responded by comparing her advocacy to performing sexual favors for music producers.
Around the time of the 2020 presidential election, Beattie pivoted to become an “America First” activist and editor at Revolver News, where he would be known for spreading conspiracy theories about the January 6 insurrection. On the day of the attack, Beattie cheered on the protesters, writing that the “FBI should take a knee to show respect to the MAGA protestors,” and that “this color revolution is red, white and blue,” a reference to the term used to refer to protest-led overthrows of governments in Eastern European countries.
After the insurrection was unsuccessful, however, he started calling January 6 a “Fedsurrection,” or a “false flag” orchestrated by the federal government, and obsessively wrote about the pipe bombs discovered by authorities on January 6, claiming that they belonged to the DNC and that there was a subsequent “cover-up” by Vice President Kamala Harris’ Secret Service detail to hide the government’s alleged participation in it. He has also spread conspiracy theories about other instances, such as the assassination attempt on Trump at his Butler, Pa., rally, when Beattie claimed that it “curiously coincided with the interim period following Biden’s disastrous debate performance.”
Beattie attended the National Conservatism Conference (NatCon) in Miami, Fla., in early September 2022, organized by groups close to Trump and the authoritarian Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. There, Beattie gave a speech titled “Can One be an American Nationalist,” where he claimed that “every important institution in the United States is dictated, if not animated, by a vicious hostility toward precisely the type of American who might identify as a nationalist.” He cites, incorrectly, the tire company Goodyear’s decision to allow employees to wear attire supporting Black Lives Matter but not red MAGA hats, despite the company’s policy only banning attire tied to political campaigns. Other speakers on his panel at NatCon included Orbán’s chief advisor Balázs Orbán (no relation) and the rabidly anti-LGBTQ+ Austin Ruse, head of C-FAM. Mark Krikorian, head of the anti-immigrant group the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, who helped spearhead Project 2025, and John O’Sullivan, president of the pro-Orbán Danube Institute, also were on the panel.
Beattie’s appointment to a high-ranking State Department position in April 2025 has reignited concerns about the Trump administration’s ties to far-right ideologies and figures, especially as recent reports highlight his role in dismantling key disinformation programs, such as the Global Engagement Center. His history of promoting Great Replacement and Fedsurrection conspiracy theories, coupled with his associations with figures like Peter Brimelow and events like the NatCon conference, highlights ongoing debates about extremism in U.S. politics as the Trump administration’s controversial appointments continue.
