While the last 48 hours have been focused on the Presidential race between Democratic nominee Kamala Harris and Republican nominee Donald Trump, there is a news story that has gone under the radar. Yesterday, Amanda Moore published an article in Politico that the Trump campaign had to fire a regional field director for Trump Force 47 in Western Pennsylvania for being a White Nationalist.
Moore explained in the piece that she received a tip that the staffer, Luke Meyer, created an online persona to go on the Alexandria podcast with Richard Spencer, who was a major player in the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville that led to the death of Heather Heyer. According to Moore, Meyer used a fake name, Alberto Barbarossa, to co-host the podcast and post on an X account without being detected.
After getting the tip, Moore looked to connect Meyer with Barbossa, which she did rather easily. Meyer and Barbossa both shared the same birthday, July 1, which coincidentally is the same birthday as former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke, something Meyer was proud to Tweet about as Barbossa. Through some social media digging, Moore also found out that Barbossa and Meyer were in Clarksburg, West Virginia, on the same day, and also saw a Barbossa post where he was clearly in the Trump Force 47 office in Beaver County, a place Moore instantly recognized from looking at pictures online.
After gathering the evidence, Moore went to confront Meyer, who admitted him and Barbossa were the same person. After being caught, Meyer wrote an email to Moore, saying “I am glad you pieced these little clues together like an antifa Nancy Drew. It made me realize how draining it has been having to conceal my true thoughts for as long as I have.”
Meyer’s true thoughts are deeply disturbing. After the Hamas terrorist attack in Israel last October, Trump said that he would condemn “Jew haters” who opposed Israel. In response, Meyer, posing as Barbossa, tweeted, “Trump out here badly underestimating just how much of his own campaign staff are ‘Jew-haters.’” Meyer, again using his alias, said Trump should stop reaching out to Black Americans so much, saying, “Trump will stop pandering to Blacks when the sun rises in the West and sets in the East. When the seas go dry and mountains blow in the wind like leaves.”
After finding out who Meyer was, Moore reached out to the PA Trump Force 47 team. She ended up getting a response from the Republican Party of Pennsylvania, who said, “The employee in question was background-checked and vetted, but unbeknownst to us was operating separately under a pseudonym. If we’d had any inkling about his hidden and despicable activity he would never have been hired, and the instant we learned of it he was fired. We have no place in our Party or nation for people with such shameful, hateful views.”
While the party might not think that there is room for these views, Meyer seems to believe that Trump has given him an opportunity to get a platform. “Like the hydra, you can cut off my head and hold it up for the world to see, but two more will quietly appear and be working in the shadows,” Meyer wrote. “Slating Trump to speak at [Madison Square Garden], putting ‘poisoning the blood’ in his speeches, setting up Odal runes at CPAC, etc. In a few years, one of those groypers [white supremacists] might even quietly bring me back in, with a stern warning for me to ‘be more careful next time.’”
Moore concluded her piece about the experience by looking back on what White Nationalists did under Trump’s first term, and what they will try to do if he gets a second.
“People who embrace an accelerationist view believe the country is more chaotic when Trump is in power. In this view, that chaos or unrest comes from Republicans — things like Jan. 6. and Charlottesville — and from Democrats — for example, large scale racial justice protests and riots following George Floyd’s death. White nationalists hope that unrest will scare Americans into being more anxious, fearful of diversity, nativist and racist,” she wrote.
