‘Competent White Men Must Be in Charge,’ High-Profile State Dept. Appointee Wrote Last Year

Donald Trump’s return to the White House is not only a second opportunity for the president to fulfill his political wishlist, but a second chance for some of the most extreme figures in his first administration to climb the rungs of power. 

Enter Darren Beattie, a former Trump staffer who was fired from the White House in 2016 after attending a white nationalist conference. Beattie has now been tapped to serve as the State Department’s acting Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, according to a report from Semafor. It’s a mouthful, but it’s a high-level office in the department. 

Beattie is notorious for his affiliations with some of the most noxious corners of Trumpworld, and his appointment to the influential State Department role has revived scrutiny on his past writings and statements. 

In October, for example, Beattie wrote on X: “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.” 

His fixation on denigrating racial minorities and women is longstanding. On Jan. 6 of 2021, while rioters stormed the Capitol in an attempt to prevent the Electoral College certification of former President Joe Biden, Beattie spent the day tweeting at prominent Black political figures and organizations, telling them they needed to “learn their place,” and “bend the knee to MAGA.” 

“Ibram Kendi needs to learn his place and take a knee to MAGA. Learn his proper role in our society,” he wrote of the famed Black author. 

In May of 2023, Beattie wrote: “Middle class and working class white men are treated far worse in America than Uiguhrs are in China,” a reference to the Turkish-descendent ethnic group targeted by Chinese government’s ethnic cleansing campaigns. 

In 2020, the Anti-Defamation League denounced Beattie, who is Jewish, after he was appointed to the Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad, a group that funds the preservation of mass graves and burial sites of Jews who were killed during the Holocaust in Eastern Europe. 

In Beattie’s appointment, Secretary of State Marco Rubio is demonstrating that he is not distancing himself from the extremist hijacking of American institutions currently roiling large swaths of the federal government.