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MAGA intellectual Darren Beattie will fill key State Department role

Updated Feb 2, 2025, 5:35pm EST
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Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons
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The Scoop

Secretary of State Marco Rubio will appoint Darren Beattie, a speechwriter in President Donald Trump’s first term, acting undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, two people briefed on the plans said.

Beattie has been a vocal critic of broad swathes of American foreign policy and represents a dramatic step away from the establishment Republicanism Rubio long embodied: In a widely-circulated essay on the site he founded, Revolver, Beattie compared the “color revolutions” that Western democracies backed in Eastern Europe in the 1990s and 2000s to “the coordinated efforts of government bureaucrats, NGOs, and the media to oust President Trump.”

It’s unclear whether Beattie will be nominated to fill the role on a permanent basis, and he declined to comment on the post. A State Department spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to an inquiry.

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Know More

Beattie, who has a PhD in political theory from Duke University, where he also taught, was fired in 2018 after attending a conference with white nationalists. He was appointed by Trump in 2020 to a the Commission for the Preservation of American Heritage Abroad, a move that the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, Jonathan Greenblatt, called “outrageous” at the time. (Greenblatt declined to comment Sunday.) The commission works with other governments to preserve sites related to World War II and the Holocaust.

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The View From MAGA

Beattie’s appointment will send another signal that the new administration is rooting itself deeply in the new right.

“Darren personifies the America First Right — smart, tough, relentless — with a ‘take no prisoners’ attitude. He made Revolver a major player in the frontal attack on the Deep State,” the former Trump adviser Steve Bannon said in a text message. “As important as his agency will be in the building at ‘Foggy Bottom’ , the symbolism of his hire by POTUS screams: ‘We Don’t Give 2 F****x’ for convention.’”
The media figure Tucker Carlson called Beattie “decent and genuinely smart” in a text message.

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Ben’s view

Beattie is a well-regarded figure in Trump’s orbit whose controversy in 2018 — he appeared at a conference with extreme figures, but was not criticized for anything he said there — barely rates by 2025 standards.

The move offers a glimpse, however, at how Rubio is staffing his department to reassure the MAGA faithful that he’s with the program. Rubio’s director of policy planning is another MAGA intellectual, Michael Anton, whose essay, ”The Flight 93 Election″ made the case for electing Trump in 2016 at any cost.

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The role that Beattie is filling on, at least, a temporary basis oversees American public diplomacy abroad, as well as the high-profile office of the department spokesperson in Washington.

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