Trump's Flood-the-Zone News Cycle Let Fired Aide Sneak Back In
It’s hard to drink from a firehose. Every news cycle brings fresh horrors on how our democracy is being ravaged by people whose main qualifications are their dedication to Donald Trump. As the White House bombards the country with wave after wave of fresh decrees, important and disturbing factors go unnoticed.
Media attention has been focused on the Big Three nominees—RFK Jr., Tulsi Gabbard and Kash Patel—while others, who many have never heard of, are being installed to shape the government in Trump’s twisted image of white grievance. Darren Beattie is one of many whose known views and recent history make him a terrible choice for the job he now holds as acting under secretary for public diplomacy at the State Department.
He was fired from the first Trump White House, where he was a speechwriter, after attending and speaking at a white supremacist conference. That was back when the Trumpers were still worried about optics. His consolation prize, awarded by Trump in 2020, was a seat on the Commission to Preserve America’s Cultural Heritage Abroad, which mainly oversees Holocaust sites. Jewish groups weren’t happy about that, and in 2022, President Biden had Beattie removed from the Commission.
Now Beattie is awaiting Senate confirmation to lead a $2.5 billion, 5,000-person global enterprise—or at least that’s what the Bureau of Public Diplomacy was under his predecessor. Seems unlikely that he will be a proponent of the public advocacy of cultural and educational programs around the world that the State Department funds.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/opinion-trump-flood-zone-news-172634674.html
Make America Great White Again
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Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons | The Chronicle
By Abby Spiller
February 4, 2025 | 9:48pm EST
Former Duke visiting professor Darren Beattie was tapped to serve as the acting undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs by Secretary of State Marco Rubio Monday. ... In his role, Beattie, Graduate School ‘16, will manage the country’s public diplomacy outreach on topics including counterterrorism and violent extremism, assist in developing foreign policy initiatives as well as oversee both the Educational and Cultural Affairs and Global Public Affairs bureaus. The State Department has not indicated whether the administration plans to nominate him beyond the acting role, which would require Senate confirmation.
Beattie worked at Duke in the 2016-17 academic year on a one-year contract in the department of political science. While pursuing his doctorate at the University in years prior, Beattie wrote his thesis on modernity from the perspective of German philosopher Martin Heidegger, who was also a member of the Nazi Party. In his thesis, Beattie recognized the philosopher’s ties with the party as “highly troublesome,” and primarily focused on the significance of Heidegger’s scholarly contributions.
Additionally, during the beginning of his doctoral candidacy at Duke, Beattie wrote a biweekly column for The Chronicle. Upon returning as a faculty member, he wrote one guest column, where he condemned the University’s decision to sign a letter expressing opposition to President Donald Trump’s travel ban affecting several Muslim-majority countries.
The former Duke professor is well known for spreading conspiracy theories about the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection and has been denounced for his hateful rhetoric — most notably a post on X asserting that “competent white men must be in charge,” and that the “[U.S.’] ideology is predicated on coddling the feelings of women and minorities.” ... Following his stint at Duke, Beattie became a speechwriter for the first Trump administration, where he worked on a number of speeches for Stephen Miller, Trinity ‘07 and deputy chief of staff for policy for the Trump administration, according to The Washington Post.
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