Donald Trump’s State pick wipes 5,000 tweets — because his racist ideas and execution calls don’t age well

Donald Trump’s nominee for Assistant Secretary of State for International Organizations, Jeremy Carl, has deleted at least 5,000 tweets from his account on X. According to CNN, this appears to be an attempt to scrub a history of extremist and racist commentary, including a post that called for the execution of a political opponent.

The effort to erase his digital past before the nomination wasn’t completely successful because, while he scrubbed his main account and even reportedly asked the Internet Archive to remove his tweets, he missed an older username associated with the same account. This oversight kept thousands of his posts publicly accessible, revealing a deeply troubling pattern of rhetoric that calls into question his fitness for a high-level diplomatic role.

Among the most shocking posts is a May 2023 tweet where Carl stated that if the U.S. were a “serious nation,” American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten would be “tried for crimes against America’s children and would get the death penalty”. That’s not just strong language; that’s a call for the government-sanctioned execution of a political opponent.

Trump’s nominee unsurprisingly has outdated and racist views

Carl also repeatedly expressed sympathy for the rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. He described them as “political prisoners” and made the utterly jaw-dropping claim that the January 6 defendants “had it worse than Black Americans in the Jim Crow South”. To even compare a modern-day riot to the systemic, brutal oppression of the Jim Crow era is a level of historical illiteracy and casual racism that should disqualify anyone from government service, let alone a role in international relations.

On the racism front, Carl’s deleted posts reportedly included tweets promoting the white supremacist “great replacement theory,” which is a nasty bit of rhetoric that alleges a conspiracy to systematically replace white Americans through immigration. He also reportedly took a shot at white people who celebrate Juneteenth, claiming they had “surrendered,” and repeatedly downplayed instances of police violence against Black people.

In one particularly vile comment, he even mocked the murder of George Floyd, calling him a “violent felon” who he claimed was “looking up from hell”. Despite this mountain of evidence, including the direct quote calling for Weingarten’s execution, the State Department has stood by its nominee.

When CNN reached out for comment, State Department deputy spokesman Tommy Pigott issued a statement defending Carl, saying, “He’s never called for political violence”. They went on to say they “look forward to Jeremy Carl’s contributions in support of the America First foreign policy agenda where he will ensure we are bringing international organizations back to their core mandates”.

Honestly, I don’t know how you can read a tweet calling for the death penalty for a union leader and then turn around and claim, “He’s never called for political violence.” That statement is ridiculous and an insult to anyone’s intelligence.