What’s with all the Nazis, white supremacists and women-haters?

Trump's 'family ties' have horrifying possibilities

By Sam Bellamy

Richard Nixon had brother Donald, whose financial dealings were so suspect that Tricky Dick authorized wiretapping his younger sibling’s phone to monitor for influence peddlers.

Jimmy Carter had beer-swilling brother Billy, who relished the stereotype of redneck and liked to rub elbows (and billfolds) with the Libyan government.

Bill Clinton had half-brother Roger, whose behavior was so erratic that his Secret Service code name was “Headache,” as well as brothers-in-law Hugh and Tony Rodham, whose business dealings led to additional Excedrin moments.

And Joe Biden, of course, has his son Hunter – he of the infamous laptop, naked waterslide adventures with hookers, lucrative Chinese and Ukrainian lobbyist deals, and felony firearms possession and tax evasion convictions.

And Donald Trump? Oh, he’s had his share of shady relations, such as appointing his eminently underqualified daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared to key roles in his first administration, but he defends those decisions as evidence of his “stable genius.”

That’s not counting Donald Jr.’s frequent bouts of foamy-mouthed logorrhea about public policy. Or the entire family’s propensity for cashing in on Daddy’s seat in the Oval Office or, more accurately, his perch in the White House dining room, where he can watch Fox News in peace without being troubled by only-sorta-flushable memos, briefings and other bothersome presidential stuff.

But Trump’s most troubling “family” members aren’t related by blood – unless you count the blood of police officers attacked by his supporters during the Jan. 6 insurrection.

I’m referring to the social climbing Nazis, white supremacists, rabid misogynists and other miscreants who seem attracted to Trump and his cronies like flies to honey, Billy to Pabst and Hunter to cocaine.

There’s Timothy Hale-Cusanelli, a convicted (but free) Jan. 6 rioter who spoke twice at events at Trump’s Bedminster golf club this summer. At his trial, federal prosecutors described the little Timmy – who has been photographed sporting a der Fuehrer mustache – as a “white supremacist and Nazi sympathizer” who told former work colleagues at a Navy weapons station that “Hitler should have finished the job” and that babies with disabilities should be shot in their foreheads.

There’s Nick Fuentes, the scabrous little podcaster who’s compared Jewish victims of the Holocaust to cookies baking in an oven, mocked J.D. Vance for marrying a woman of Indian descent, and started a viral post-election taunt of “your body, my choice” directed at women they don’t even know. Fuentes and antisemite Kanye West (“I love Jewish people, but I also love Nazis”) were dinner guests of Trump’s at Mar-a-Lago a couple of years ago.

There are the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, who were among the numerous extremist groups front and center at the deadly Jan. 6 rioting and the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., and among the rabble that Trump encouraged to “stand back and stand by” during a 2020 debate with Joe Biden.

There are also the people in Trump’s inner circle who seem entirely too comfortable hobnobbing with extremists.

Radio host Tucker Carlson, who contends white people are being replaced by brown people as part of a nefarious Democratic Party plot, this fall hosted and effusively praised a Holocaust denier and Nazi apologist who calls Winston Churchill – not little Timmy’s mustachioed bro – the “chief villain of the Second World War.”

Steve Bannon confided to a New York Times reporter that he thought, “That’s Hitler!” when he watched Trump roll down the escalator at gleamy Trump Tower to announce his candidacy in 2015. And that was supposed to be some sort of compliment.

Trump toady and erstwhile U.S. attorney general nominee Matt Gaetz invited Holocaust-denying blogger Charles C. Johnson to a State of the Union address in 2018. Johnson once wrote that Auschwitz was fake and that “only” 250,000 Jews died during the Holocaust (of typhus, not genocide). Gaetz later apologized but said it was unfair to called Johnson a Holocaust denier and, besides, he didn’t know anything about Johnson’s background when he invited him. For what it’s worth, Johnson also says he’s not an antisemite.

That’s the same Johnson, by the way, who met with Trump’s first Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross at least once and, as The Washington Post chronicled in great detail, engaged in a 20-month-long text exchange over an encrypted messaging platform with J.D. Vance, wherein Vance solicited Johnson’s opinion on UFOs, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the circumstances of Jeffrey Epstein’s death. This occurred after Vance was elected to the U.S. Senate and after the Gaetz and Ross controversies.

And there are other, more distant hangers-on, such as a young man who was fired as a regional director for the Trump Force 47, a joint effort of the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee, shortly before this year’s election when it was discovered that he hosts a podcast with white supremacist and Unite the Right spewmaster Richard Spencer.

None of this takes into account the Trump world’s associations with others who are indisputably batshit, such as a “Pizzagate” conspiracist Jack Posobiec (Vance wrote a positive blurb for his book) and Alex Jones, befouler of the memories of the murdered Sandy Hook children, host of hate-filled ramblings by Kanye and others, and the former owner of Infowars, the batshittery clearinghouse now safely in the hands of The Onion.

In all these cases, Trump aides – like the supposedly unsuspecting Gaetz, Vance, et al – issue statements ranging from the apologetic of course-President-Trump-doesn’t-agree-with-this-tomfoolery denouncements to the we’d-never-heard-of-this-guy-until-you-fake-news-treasonators-brought-it-up deflections.

All of which begs the question: How in the name of Billy Beer and all that is holy do so many Nazis in training diapers, white power goons and virulent women-haters get so damned close to the president of the United States and his top advisors?

Is there a parallel in history to this? Yes, occupants of the White House and Capitol Hill offices have embraced and legislated some of the most loathsome policies in human history. And more than a few U.S. leaders have kept a dog whistle around their necks to summon the vilest denizens of the electorate when they saw a need.

But have we ever had a president whom two longtime military leaders – former Trump chief of staff John Kelley and Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Mark Milley – have denounced as “a fascist”? Kelley, part of a class of men known for never-ever-ever speaking ill of their commander in chief, even recalls occasions when Trump cooed little mustachioed Timmy-like remarks about Hitler, observing that, “You know, Hitler did some good things, too.”

And did any other president think it might be a swell idea to pressure-wash Nazi-sympathizing, let-Europe-and-the-Jews-fend-for-themselves aviator Charles Lindbergh’s infamous “America First” slogan and trot it out again for another run in the sun?

It’s unlikely that Trump is, as shape-shifting J.D. Vance once speculated, “America’s Hitler.” For one thing, Trump and his confederacy of dunces lack the organizational skills. They couldn’t even pull off “Infrastructure Week” during Trump’s first term; forget about a blitzkrieg or a Beer Hall Putsch.

But the masters of the Trump universe certainly do have a fondness for fascist pursuits, like rounding up immigrants we don’t have sufficient ability to feed, clothe, house or return home. And then there’s the dangerous notion of using the military to break up demonstrations.

In light of all of that, the weak apologies and never-met-the-guy tap-dances ring deafeningly hollow. (Get away from my forehead, Timmy!) It’s just not credible when, again and again, the worst among us are holding a knife and fork on the other side of the dinner table, are handed a microphone to spew hatred, or are ushered down the aisle to a fancy state function.

Franklin D. Roosevelt uttered an oft-quoted quip about his troublesome cousin Alice, who was the daughter of Teddy Roosevelt and twice banned from the White House grounds by TR’s successors for things like for burying a voodoo doll of incoming First Lady Nellie Taft on the White House lawn.

“I can either run the country or I can attend to Alice,” FDR said, “but I cannot possibly do both.”

Trump and his people need to do both – run the country and attend to the Nazis and other hooligans promenading past security and into government chambers. Denounce them firmly, every time, and block their return. They are not legitimate contributors to public policy, and they have no business near national leaders. Associating with these wretched humans – surreal as its sounds – normalizes them and makes them appear to be acceptable fixtures in the public sphere.

Trump himself – not his hyperbolic spokesperson Steve Cheung, chief immigrant-hater Stephen Miller or anyone else – needs to call a halt to rubbing elbows and billfolds with extremists like Nick Fuentes, Charles Johnson, and every other podcaster and blogger emerging from the sewer.

And if Trump doesn’t shut down this threat immediately, Americans – whose forebears bitched mightily about Donald, Billy, Roger, Hunter, Alice and all the other thorns in the First Family tree – need to raise their voices in outrage. This is far more serious than presidential kin guzzling beer, watersliding, or even making sleazy business deals.

Today’s America is not Germany of the 1930s and ’40s. But it damn well could become a tawdry, bloodily horrifying facsimile if we are not vigilant, if we do not speak up, if we do not fight this fire.