White nationalist ran Trump campaign's field operations in crucial swing state: report
A white nationalist activist with ties to the perpetrators of the violent rally in Charlottesville ran field operations for former President Donald Trump's campaign in a critical battleground state for five months, reported Politico — and only fired him Friday when they discovered his identity.
According to the report from Amanda Moore, Luke Meyer, the 24-year-old director of field operations for the Trump campaign in western Pennsylvania, "goes by the online name Alberto Barbarossa. As Barbarossa, he co-hosts the Alexandria podcast with Richard Spencer, organizer of the 2017 white nationalist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. On his podcast and others, and in posts online, Barbarossa regularly shares white nationalist views."
In one of his rants, Barbarossa said, “Why can’t we make New York, for example, white again? Why can’t we clear out and reclaim Miami? I’m not saying we need to be 100 percent homogeneous. I’m not saying we need to be North Korea or Japan or anything like that. A return to 80 percent, 90 percent white would probably be, probably the best we could hope for, to some degree.”
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When Moore confronted Meyer with the evidence he was Barbarossa, Meyer confessed, saying in an email that he tried to conceal it from the Trump campaign.
“I am glad you pieced these little clues together like an antifa Nancy Drew,” he said. “It made me realize how draining it has been having to conceal my true thoughts for as long as I have.”
The report comes amid extensive reporting that Trump's in-house field operations have been barebones, with most canvassing work farmed out to tech billionaire Elon Musk's America PAC and the far-right youth organization Turning Point USA.
Richard Spencer has become a supporter of the Democratic Party in recent years, saying he believes the GOP and Trump are too "nihilistic" to run the country, and that he'll back Vice President Kamala Harris because "I just want someone who is competent to be in charge so that something can happen, as opposed to demonization of the other side."
It's a stark reversal from 2016, when he said of Hillary Clinton, "Women should never be allowed to make foreign policy" because "their vindictiveness knows no bounds."