Darren Beattie

On November 17 2020 Donald Trump appointed Darren Jeffrey Beattie to be a member of the Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad. In August 2018, the White House fired Beattie, a speechwriter, for attending the H.L. Mencken Club's 2016 conference and speaking on a panel alongside the founder of a right-wing website that labels immigration as a threat to the American nation-state, and diversity as “not a strength, but a vulnerability.” The Washington Post reported at the time that Beattie was asked to resign, but insisted he had said nothing objectionable. The commission’s role is to identify and report on cemeteries, monuments and buildings in Eastern and Central Europe with cultural ties to America, and seek their preservation from the relevant governments. The U.S. established the commission in 1985 to protect sites amid concerns of anti-Semitism and communism. On November 12 2020, Beattie called a Huffington Post reporter a “neo-Stasi commissar” over Twitter, a reference to the state police service of East Germany.