The administration of US President Donald Trump has appointed to serve as the top public diplomacy official a former speech writer for Trump with a history of doubts over US foreign policy toward Taiwan and inflammatory comments on women and minorities, at one point saying that "competent white men must be in charge."
Darren Beattie has been named the acting undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, a senior US Department of State official said, a role that determines the tone of the US' public messaging in the world.
Photo: Bloomberg
Beattie requires US Senate confirmation to serve on a permanent basis.
"Thanks to President Trump’s miraculous victory, we have entered the beginning of a new Golden Age—of success, prosperity, legitimacy, and accountability. I have been given the great honor of serving once again in Trump’s administration, this time in the Department of State," Beattie said on X in a statement posted by Revolver News, a right-wing media outlet that he founded which regularly promotes conspiracy theories.
Beattie's earlier social media posts have come under the spotlight, prompting a warning from Jewish advocacy group Anti-Defamation League that said he "has no place in a role representing American values abroad."
"Throughout the years, Beattie has participated in several conversations and events organized by notorious racists, antisemites and white supremacists and has continuously promoted an array of conspiracy theories, including those related to the Jan. 6 insurrection and the 'Great Replacement' theory, embraced by antisemites and white supremacists," the league said.
Beattie did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Beattie was terminated as a speech writer for Trump after the Washington Post in 2018 reported that he had spoken at a conference attended by well-known white nationalists.
Posts by Beattie on X have advocated for white men being in charge and questioned US policy toward Taiwan.
In a post in October last year, Beattie wrote that the US' national ideology is based on "coddling the feelings of women and minorities, and demoralizing competent white men," and that "competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work."
He questioned US policy toward Taiwan, saying that the nation was "inevitably" going to belong to China, and that it was "not worth expending any capital to prevent."
In July last year, he wrote that Taiwan being absorbed into China "might mean fewer drag queen parades in Taiwan, but otherwise not the end of the world."
He said a "grand deal should be struck---we agree to acknowledge this reality in exchange for massive concessions from China on Africa and Antarctica."
Michael Sobolik, a senior fellow and China expert at the Hudson Institute, criticized Beattie's appointment, saying his positions on Taiwan and the Muslim Uighur minority in China gave Beijing "a bullhorn" at the State Department.
"It’s the opposite of an America First foreign policy and actually subverts America’s national interests. President Trump needs political appointees who don’t actively work against his own foreign policy agenda," Sobolik said.
Beattie has also said the US treats white people in the rural US worse than China treats the Uighurs.
"America treats rural whites far worse than China treats" Uighurs, Beattie wrote on X in October last year.
In 2021, he said China was not "genocidal."
James Watson — the Nobel laureate co-credited with the pivotal discovery of DNA’s double-helix structure, but whose career was later tainted by his repeated racist remarks — has died, his former lab said on Friday. He was 97. The eminent biologist died on Thursday in hospice care on Long Island in New York, announced the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he was based for much of his career. Watson became among the 20th century’s most storied scientists for his 1953 breakthrough discovery of the double helix with researcher partner Francis Crick. Along with Crick and Maurice Wilkins, he shared the
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
RUBBER STAMP? The latest legislative session was the most productive in the number of bills passed, but critics attributed it to a lack of dissenting voices On their last day at work, Hong Kong’s lawmakers — the first batch chosen under Beijing’s mantra of “patriots administering Hong Kong” — posed for group pictures, celebrating a job well done after four years of opposition-free politics. However, despite their smiles, about one-third of the Legislative Council will not seek another term in next month’s election, with the self-described non-establishment figure Tik Chi-yuen (狄志遠) being among those bowing out. “It used to be that [the legislature] had the benefit of free expression... Now it is more uniform. There are multiple voices, but they are not diverse enough,” Tik said, comparing it
TOWERING FIGURE: To Republicans she was emblematic of the excesses of the liberal elite, but lawmakers admired her ability to corral her caucus through difficult votes Nancy Pelosi, a towering figure in US politics, a leading foe of US President Donald Trump and the first woman to serve as US House of Representatives speaker, on Thursday announced that she would step down at the next election. Admired as a master strategist with a no-nonsense leadership style that delivered for her party, the 85-year-old Democrat shepherded historic legislation through the US Congress as she navigated a bitter partisan divide. In later years, she was a fierce adversary of Trump, twice leading his impeachment and stunning Washington in 2020 when she ripped up a copy of his speech to the
RSS