“Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work,” Darren Beattie posted in 2024. Lucky for America, Beattie is in charge. Of two things, actually: Brazil policy at the State Department, and the US Institute of Peace, which Trump has since renamed after himself.
Getting here wasn’t easy. In 2018, Trump’s own White House fired Beattie as a speechwriter after the Fake News Media found he’d spoken alongside the founder of the anti-immigrant hate site VDARE at a conference popular with white nationalists. Beattie insisted his talk was “nothing objectionable,” but got the boot anyway. Oh, those good ole woke days of Trump 1.0!
In exile, Beattie launched Revolver News, selling “It’s OK to deny 2020” T-shirts and explaining that January 6 was really just a setup, a “Fedsurrection.” On the anniversary of the Fedsurrection, he informed Tim Scott, the Senate’s only black Republican, that he “needs to learn his place and take a KNEE to MAGA.”
So, who better to lead the US Institute of Peace?
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Recognizing Beattie’s talent, Trump 2.0 rehired him. Marco Rubio put him in charge of America’s image abroad, including messaging to counter extremism. Perfect. Write what you know, they say.
And Beattie got right to work, reportedly rejecting nearly 200 approved Fulbright scholars, some for the crime of studying climate change. Eleven of the 12 board members quit in protest.
Next, Rubio and Hegseth handed Beattie the Institute of Peace, freshly gutted by DOGE of nearly all its 300 staffers. Beattie’s qualifications? Pledging “Peace through strength,” he proposed stripping “undesirables” of their citizenship and putting them “to work extracting rare earth minerals,”
Beattie’s real passion project, though, is Brazil. The country’s far-right ex-president, Jair Bolsonaro, earned the nickname “Trump of the Tropics”: He refused to accept his 2022 loss, his supporters stormed government buildings, and he’s now serving 27 years for plotting a coup. Beattie reportedly told US diplomats it was American policy to put Bolsonaro back in power.
Alas, in October 2026, despite Beattie’s best efforts, Brazilians nixed the proxy candidacy of Bolsonaro’s son and reelected Lula.
Must be that Beattie isn’t white enough.
