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Mandatory Credit: Photo by AP/Shutterstock (8558793f)Donald Trump, Kellyanne Conway, Claudia Conway Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway and her daughter Claudia take their seats at the Women's Empowerment Panel, at the White House in WashingtonPence, Washington, USA - 29 Mar 2017.

In spite of family drama with her daughter, Kellyanne Conway maintains a net worth of $39 million.

She sold The Polling Company for a total of $1 million to $5 million.

She didnt pay taxes on the sale of the company due to a political loophole.

Kellyanne Conway was the senior counselor to former President Donald Trump from 2016 to 2020. Recently, she has stepped into the public spotlight over allegations of tweeting out topless photos of her 16-teen year old daughter, Claudia. Claudia later withdrew charges, saying her mother had been hacked. Kellyanne Conway then appeared during her daughters American Idol appearance. The TikTok celeb had stated she was getting into music to establish her own identity, according to USA Today.

See: The Elections Biggest October Surprise May Have Been a 16-Year-Old on TikTokFind: How Much White House Staffs Have Been Paid for the Past 18 Years

Yet, when Claudia performed, her mother swept her up in a big hug on stage in spite of the fact that Claudia had been contemplating emancipation from both her parents last summer. Last fall, upon leaving her White House position, Kellyanne Conway had told Salon she was seeking less drama, more mama for her future.

Heres what you need to know about this former Trump staffers career and net worth.

Birthdate: Jan. 20, 1967Net worth: $40 millionPrimary source of income: President and CEO of The Polling Company; senior counselor to TrumpCareer highlights: Senior counselor to President Trump

As a White House employee, Conway made $179,700 a year. But her business, The Polling Company, has earned her the bulk of her income in recent years. In 2016, Conway reported bringing home just over $800,000 in income from The Polling Company, according to a document obtained by Open Secrets. Between Conway and her husband, George Conway, the couple disclosed assets ranging between $10 million and $39.3 million when Conway started work in the White House in 2017.

See: Dr. Fauci Tops the List of Highest-Paid Federal Employees Who Else Out-Earns Biden?Find: Youre Fired! How Much These Former Trump Staffers Made

In September 2017, Conway sold The Polling Company for an amount between $1 million and $5 million. She was permitted to defer capital gains tax on the sale, because she was required to sell the business to comply with federal conflict-of-interest laws.

Deferring capital gains taxes can enable the taxpayer to offset the capital gains through tax-loss harvesting, or selling underperforming assets at a loss to reduce tax liability. After leaving the White House in October 2020, Conway started collecting a $15,000 monthly stipend from the Republican National Committee, according to federal filings.

Its clear that Trump has a soft spot for Conway, but the way their relationship began is vexing. In 2001, Conway and her husband were tenants in a New York City Trump-owned property and embroiled in a dispute over the decision to remove Trumps name from the buildings facade. During a homeowners board meeting, Trump was so impressed by George that he offered him a seat on the board. George declined and deferred the invitation to his wife, who accepted.

Ten years later, Kellyanne accepted employment from Trumps former opponent, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), during the 2016 presidential election. Conway transitioned over to the Trump ticket and eventually became his campaign manager during the months leading up to the November 2016 election. Since then, Conway has seen the White House staff cycle several times over while sitting in her perch as senior counselor to the president.

See: Donald Trump Recently Lost $700 Million How Much Is He Worth?Find: How Much Is President Joe Biden Worth?

Long before she was credited with introducing the phrase alternative facts into the public lexicon, Conway was born Kellyanne Fitzgerald in Atco, N.J. After she graduated from George Washington Universitys law school, Conway entered the political sphere after briefly practicing law. In 1995, at age 28, she founded The Polling Company, a political consultancy practice. In the 90s, Conway worked the cable TV circuit as a voice of the Republican party, but according to her peers, her opinions began to skew to the fringes of conventional conservatism.

See: 12 Political Figures Who Made Major Career ChangesFind: Bidens First Month vs. Trumps: Here Are the Major Numbers To Know

From the beginning of their relationship, Conway and her husband, George, a fellow attorney and political insider, were a match made in GOP heaven the two were even introduced by polarizing conservative pundit Ann Coulter. The Conways have four children, twins Claudia and George, Jr., Charlotte and Vanessa, and are rumored to reside in an $8 million, 15,000 square-foot Washington, D.C. mansion.

Despite the fact that Conway remains one of Trumps most trusted staffers, George is one of Trumps most vocal conservative critics.

Keep reading to see why President Trumps net worth is going nowhere fast.

More from GOBankingRates

Stephanie Asymkos contributed to the reporting of this article.

This article originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com: How Rich Is Kellyanne Conway? Inside the Finances of the Ex-Trump Staffer as Her Daughter Takes American Idol by Storm

See the original post here:
How Rich Is Kellyanne Conway? Inside the Finances of the Ex-Trump Staffer as Her Daughter Takes American Idol by Storm - AOL

If I were still a resident of Chattanooga and were participating in the vote for the runoff election for mayor, I wouldn't be able to allow myself to consider Tim Kelly for mayor, simply on the general principle that Chattanooga doesn't need its "66th" consecutive white male mayor. This glaring statistic, in the year 2021 no less, is not a good look for Chattanooga to the outside world. This city, my beloved hometown, for all the positive things that are happening there, gets a "zero" in diversity for local government leadership.

When the mayoral contest began I was so hopeful that Chattanooga would finally join other major metropolitan southern and Tennessee peer cities by having either their first African American or female mayor. There is still hope for that if the very capable leader Kim White wins in the runoff and finally puts Chattanooga on the diversity scoreboard. She would become Chattanooga's first non-white male mayor "ever". This would end an eye-popping "181-year" dominance of white male leadership of the local government. That is not a misprint. For 181 consecutive years, Chattanooga has been run entirely by white males.

What this statistic says to the outside world "subliminally" is "We the people of Chattanooga, collectively believe women and people of color do not have the intelligence, the character, the leadership ability, nor the wherewithal, to lead our city. As such, in any and every circumstance, we shall all elect via our votes (or not participating in voting), a white male to lead us."

I and others completely reject that fundamental premise; however, that is the message Chattanooga has sent to the outer world for 181 years. It is also the same message we send to the children of Chattanooga. Why would a little girl or brown or black child think they could be mayor of Chattanooga? No evidence exists that it is even possible in this lifetime or well into the future. Can you imagine putting up a picture of every mayor of Chattanooga in a public place like a library, a museum, or a school? What story would that display of pictures tell about our city? Would little girls or children of color see themselves in Chattanooga's history or future? Probably not.

In this runoff, the challenges that women and minorities face every day when competing against white male counterparts for jobs are clearly evident. African Americans have always known "you have to have twice the credentials and twice the experience of your white male counterparts just to be considered even with them" our parents have taught us this. The same rationale holds true for most women who also have the "double credentials and experience needed just to be even" conundrum.Women hold the additional burden of being victims of various biases that I will not experience as a man (most especially women of colo,r but that is an entirely different post).

Case in point. When I surveyed my friends and asked them why Kim White wasn't faring better among some in the black community I was told because she was in a picture with an elected official that some did not like. I thought to myself, Kim White's life, character, her abilities, her accomplishments, what she has to offer her community is defined by who she is in a picture with? That is the most ridiculous and absurd thing I have ever heard as a criterion to evaluate someone for public office. It is almost as ridiculous as what got the last female candidate for mayor defeated from years back, Ann Coulter. She, after having the lead, heading into the run-off was defeated because of a rumor about her lack of church affiliation. This rumor later morphed into her being an atheist. Sadly for her "whisper campaigns" are the high blood pressure of political campaigns "a silent killer".

I have studied a lot of politics in my lifetime and I have never heard of deciding how you want to vote based on who the candidate took a photograph with. That is too trivial and silly to even consider when the stakes are so high for a city coming out of a pandemic. If it is something to consider, then ask for all Mr. Kelly's pictures to see if he took pictures with people you don't like...that at least would be equity.

In this 2021 mayoral contest minority and female candidates had some of the best candidates Chattanooga has ever put forth to seek the office of mayor. Among them were the following: two African American "sitting councilmen'', a former city attorney that is African American (knows all the city's legal affairs/best mayor Nashville ever had was also a city attorney), a now historical black figure, the first African-American graduate of Baylor who was also a graduate of Harvard, along with being the first person of color to be endorsed by the paper for mayor, and finally Ms. White, an intelligent, well regarded civic leader, that knows all the details of anything that has to do with land use, zoning, affordable housing, an ideal resume for mayor. Ms. White is easily one of the sharpest civic leaders in Chattanooga.

All of those people mentioned, combined, could not beat Mr. Kelly " a car salesman by vocation"? Seriously? All of these most qualified candidates, via resume, and background could not beat a white male car salesman that has no traditionally relevant history or background to be mayor? On some level that is hard to process. Alas, all of those people had to have double the credentials and experience, and yet were still not "even" with Mr. Kelly.

Mr. Kelly didn't even bother with raising money, a traditional benchmark of community and political support for a candidate for any public office. He just wrote himself a check to his own campaign. Mike Bloomberg did that too and was a mere "flash in the pan" in the Democratic primary. However, with a white male's 181-year dominance of the mayoral contest, Mr. Kelly finished in "first place" without raising any money or very little. That is astonishing to political campaign nerds like myself. However, his feat was uneventful in Chattanooga mayoral politics where his "181-year advantage" supersedes all political norms.

I do not write this post to bash white males. I have many white male friends, a lot of them politically conservative, some as close as brothers that I have known for many years. This post is about being truthful about Chattanooga politics and the harm of only having one race/gender as mayor for close to "200 years". An absolutely astonishing number that does my beloved hometown a great disservice. Chattanooga, like every organized government, needs diversity in leadership (at least occasionally) to have a different perspective on the city's challenges and offer a more inclusive vision for the city's future. You need diversity in life experiences too; it helps you better understand the struggles of the people you are going to serve and lead. In short," diversity in leadership matters".

I close with this. On Jan.1, 2020, at the famous Dillard's New Year day sale, I had a chance to meet with an old political rival and now good friend. A well-known Chattanoogan and a white male. He was desperately seeking a black candidate to run for mayor. He understood as a civic leader that Chattanooga needed to keep up with the times and have someone other than a white male as mayor. In short, it is an embarrassment for a city that has produced "many" stellar African-American leaders, and female leaders, to not have, in 181 years, a person of color or woman to become mayor. It seems like everybody wants to talk about diversity until it is actually time to "be" about diversity.

It is time for Chattanooga to be brave and be bold. It is time to put points on the diversity scoreboard (after 181 years) and vote for Kim White as the next mayor of Chattanooga. Fortunately, she is an excellent choice for mayor. She has performed excellently in the debates, she knows the critical issues, she has well thought out plans to address the city's pandemic economic challenges. At age 60, she brings a certain level of poise and maturity. What I like the most about her is she has that "Chattanooga toughness and competitiveness". She is the type of person you want on your side in a fight. Lord knows we all can use that in our leaders. I also really doubt that at age "68" she would be all fired up for higher office after being a two-term mayor. A vote for Ms. White is actually the most progressive thing Chattanooga voters can do at this hour.

Vote for Ms. White for mayor and let's finally get on the diversity scoreboard.

Scott B. Lindsey

* * *

I believe Kim White is the best choice for mayor of Chattanooga.

We need a change of direction. Her opponent has been promoted as being another Andy Berke. Do we need another four years of what we have seen in the last eight years?

Chattanooga needs a mayor that has the best interest of all citizens at heart, regardless of race or gender. We need a mayor that cares about outlying communities, not just downtown. I think Kim understands that all lives matter, and is not willing to promise or compromise leadership jobs or positions in city government when she is elected.

Positions within city government have been promised by her opponent for votes and support. I think she feels as if the best qualified person should be placed in these positions after she is elected.

I certainly do not see her celebrating the death of someone that has died from cancer. Her opponent said he made a mistake in doing that. Im a firm believer that what comes out of the mouth comes from the heart. To me, that so-called mistake just showed his true character.

As a Kim White supporter, I urge you to take a good look at both candidates. Look at their character and intentions. Look at what is best for this city, yourself, and all citizens. Kim White by far is the most qualified candidate for mayor.

Jerry Walls

* * *

The only "scoreboard" that matters is if our city is truly moving forward and leveling-up for all who live here. Diversity does matter. Should you elect a candidate for the visuals or for outcomes?

I am responding to the scenario that the previous contributor posed "Can you imagine putting up a picture of every mayor of Chattanooga in a public place like a library, a museum or a school? What story would that display of pictures tell about our city?" Without context, stories are often left up to the viewer to interpret from their own perspective (or those who would like to spin a story of their own). The contributor admits that they no longer live in their "beloved hometown" so I believe their view is being filtered through their perspective and are making assumptions as to how others will view Chattanooga if we do not elect a woman. To describe Tim Kelly only as "a car salesman by vocation" is someone that doesn't have all the facts.

I encourage all who care about the future of the city of Chattanooga, first take a deeper dive into each of the candidates in this run-off; and vote. Both candidates have robust websites.

In my opinion (and the opinions of the majority of the diverse candidates that didn't make the runoff that have publicaly endorsed him), Tim Kelly will bring new thought leadership, genuine common purpose, draft and manage a strong team to ensure that Chattanooga (with all of its people and resources) moves forward. I'd highly recommend watching one or more of Tim Kelly's "Common Purpose" podcasts too as an example of his leadership style - brings together experts, asks questions, listens, then acts.

Keeli CreweSmall business owner, downtown Chattanooga

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Diversity Matters, Vote For Kim White - And Response (2) - The Chattanoogan

Kevin DeAnna who met with Thiel on the evening of July 29, 2016, in the midst of the 2016 election cycle was not merely a participant in a white supremacist subculture when he met Thiel but also was immersed in its most extreme elements, including literature admired by terrorists. Deanna wrote under the pseudonyms Gregory Hood and James Kirkpatrick over a decade for white nationalist publications such as VDARE and American Renaissance, as Hatewatch reported in a four-part series published in March 2020. He cited texts like SIEGE and used terminology drawn from such other books as The Turner Diaries in his work and in private conversation. The Turner Diaries, originally published in 1978, has influenced some of the most infamous acts of U.S. domestic terrorism, including the murder of Alan Berg in 1984 and the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. SIEGE, once an obscure neo-Nazi newsletter, has resurfaced in recent years as the preferred text of neo-Nazi terroristic organizations such as the now-defunct Atomwaffen Division.

Peter Thiel speaks onstage during the New York Times Dealbook conference on Nov. 1, 2018, in New York City. (Photo by Michael Cohen/Getty Images for The New York Times)

DeAnna was also connected to people in the U.S. government. About six weeks prior to his meeting with Thiel, DeAnna discussed recruiting for a white nationalist group with State Department official Matthew Q. Gebert. Gebert, who used the pseudonym Coach Finstock online, recruited members for D.C. Helicopter Pilots a Virginia and Washington, D.C.-based organizing chapter of white nationalist organization The Right Stuff. Gebert was suspended from his job in the Bureau of Energy Resources, but the State Department has never clarified whether or not he is still being paid.

Hatewatch confirmed reporting first published in Buzzfeed suggesting Thiel met with DeAnna, using a cache of images provided by former Breitbart editor Katie McHugh, who has since renounced white nationalism. McHugh captured a picture of DeAnnas exchange with Thiel, as well as of several other emails, in August 2016. Hatewatch was able to compare a screenshot of one of these photos, given to us by McHugh in November 2018, with a series of cached images uploaded to her iCloud. Hatewatch has also been able to verify another email thread between DeAnna and his editors at VDARE, a white nationalist website where he wrote under the pseudonym James Kirkpatrick, discussing the meeting in the same manner.

Hatewatch reached out to Thiel, DeAnna, Gebert and several other figures mentioned in this article. All but one, VDARE editor Peter Brimelow, declined to comment. Brimelow told Hatewatch that he [didnt] have clear recollection of the events mentioned in an email and asked, Isnt it rather a long time ago? Hatewatch also reached out to both Facebook and Palantir, a data analytics firm co-founded by Thiel. Palantir declined to respond, and a spokesperson from Facebook declined to comment.

The images provided to Hatewatch show a series of messages between Thiel, DeAnna and Brendan Kissam. Kissam, according to BuzzFeed, is a former conservative activist who has produced videos for VDARE under a pseudonym. Archived posts from Kissams Facebook, which were provided to Hatewatch by a group of antifascist researchers known as the Anonymous Comrades Collective, showed him interacting with white nationalists such as Counter-Currents Greg Johnson and Millicent Willows an account that appears to belong to the white nationalist YouTuber Colin Robertson, who published videos under the pseudonym Millennial Woes. (Millicent Willows used the same logo as Robertsons Millennial Woes YouTube channel.) On Jan. 21, 2017, the same weekend as Trumps presidential inauguration, he posted a selfie with Richard Spencer, who lived near Washington, D.C., at the time.

Kissam introduced the two men over email on July 30, 2016 a few days after Thiel appeared at the Republican National Convention. The message used the subject line Right Wing Dinner Squad III. Though the intent is unclear, the subject line appears similar to a meme popular on the far right, Right Wing Death Squad. As a meme it refers to the history of authoritarian far-right dictatorships and their extrajudicial killings.

Kissam wrote that he had been looking forward to you guys getting to meet. Thiel then followed up with DeAnna individually, saying he really enjoyed meeting you last night and suggesting they meet up when Thiel was in Washington, D.C., next or whenever DeAnna was in SF which likely stood for San Francisco, where Thiel lived.

As Hatewatch has noted, DeAnna had been involved with far-right and, later, white nationalist organizations for 10 years at the time the email was exchanged with Thiel.

It is unclear who else was at the gathering. However, in another email referencing the meeting, DeAnnas editor at VDARE, Peter Brimelow, cited a few other possible attendees. Dated July 2, a little less than 30 days before Thiel, DeAnna and Kissam met, Brimelow chastised DeAnna for not keeping him abreast of Alt Right developments. He cited a forthcoming meeting with the Right Stuff, Ann Coulter, Thiel, etc. as an example.

DeAnna was one of numerous people who attempted to balance careers in mainstream institutions in and around Washington, D.C., with a secret life as a white nationalist organizer. In 2006, he founded a far-right student group, Youth for Western Civilization (YWC), while working at the right-wing Leadership Institute as a field representative. (Leadership Institute, which has provided training for a number of prominent right-wing figures in the past, denied any affiliation with YWC.) While head of YWC, DeAnna began writing under the bylines Gregory Hood and James Kirkpatrick on hate sites in 2008 and 2011, respectively. Over the course of the next 12 years, DeAnna wrote well over 1,700 articles for white nationalist outlets, including VDARE, the National Policy Institutes Radix Journal, American Renaissance, Counter-Currents and The Social Contract.

Kevin DeAnna appears at the 2011 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Jeff Malet)

Kissam, for his part, was clearly aware of DeAnnas pseudonymous personas at the time he connected DeAnna to Thiel.

As McHugh recalled to Hatewatch, Kissam had attended an event where DeAnna was scheduled to speak as Gregory Hood a few months prior to his meeting with Thiel. She noted that both men were attendees at Counter-Currents inaugural New York Forum in May 2016. DeAnna, who had been a Counter-Currents contributor since 2011, was billed as one of the main speakers. McHugh, who attended the event with DeAnna, told Hatewatch that she met Kissam after the event. She noted that Kissam accompanied Counter-Currents publisher Greg Johnson, as well as other speakers, to a restaurant in the city after the speeches at the forum concluded.

DeAnna indulged deeper, more sinister currents within the white power movement as well.

DeAnnas work under the pseudonym Gregory Hood drew upon foundational white nationalist and neo-Nazi texts that have inspired numerous acts of domestic terrorism. As both Kirkpatrick and Hood, DeAnna frequently refers to a System often with a capital S, mirroring Turner Diaries author William Pierces own orthography. DeAnna, like Pierce, presents the System as both a governmental and nongovernmental coalition of minority groups set out to destroy whites.

Writing as Hood, DeAnna cited SIEGE, a collection of neo-Nazi James Masons writings, on numerous occasions. In 2013, years before the text was popularized by the neo-Nazi forum Iron March, DeAnna cited SIEGE in a Counter-Currents essay about the need to destroy the Republican Party. DeAnna wrote that Mason was correct in stating that white advocates must think of all white people everywhere as our army. The original post, published on Counter-Currents website on Jan. 31, 2013, linked to a part of the site where one could buy Masons tract for $20, plus shipping and handling.

McHugh, who dated DeAnna from 2013 to 2016, and again briefly in 2017, told Hatewatch that DeAnna owned a copy of SIEGE prior to its popularization by the neo-Nazi forum Iron March.

The bold, red lettering of SIEGE on the book spine is unmistakable. It is a heavy book, and DeAnna told me not to read it, she told Hatewatch.

Some of DeAnnas writing, such as an April 2016 essay in Radix Journal titled On LARPing, combined references to both The Turner Diaries and SIEGE.

Most of us dont do anything. . . . We dont take to the streets; we dont hang the traitors from lampposts; we dont revolt the same way any of our ancestors would, DeAnna wrote.

Unless youre not paying taxes, living outside the law, or in some form of war against the powers that be, youll be objectively helping the System keep going, whatever subversive thoughts you have within your own head. Hence, the radical (even by National Socialist standards) James Mason recommended either total war or dropping out of the System entirely, he continued.

The essay earned him the praise of at least one user on Iron March, an international neo-Nazi forum that birthed the terroristic neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen Division.

Gregory Hood is by far the closest writer to our views that [Radix Journal has], wrote one user, James Futurist, on Nov. 16, 2016.

DeAnna helped carry water for the more violent wing of the movement in other ways. The email thread between DeAnna and the Brimelows referring to his forthcoming meeting with Thiel contained a reference to a Gregory Hood article about Sacramento on AmRen. Here, Brimelow is referencing a piece penned by DeAnna under his Hood pseudonym about the battle of Sacramento a June 26, 2016, riot in Sacramento that broke out after members of the neo-Nazi Traditionalist Worker Party and Golden State Skinheads clashed with antifascist counterprotesters. As Hatewatch reported, the event resulted in 514 misdemeanor and 68 felony charges, and it involved over 100 people.

There is no doubt that it was the leftists who started the violence, but by most accounts, it was the TWP that finished it, DeAnna wrote on July 1, 2016, parroting the language used by TWPs leader Matthew Heimbach. DeAnna called TWP and GSSs event a legally sanctioned demonstration, and wrote, It is invariably violent or potentially violent leftists who attack white advocates who are demonstrating or meeting peacefully.

However, Heimbach who was not present at the event boasted at the time that we, referring the participants in the TWP and GSS event, sent six antifascist protesters to the hospital.

Around the same time he met with Thiel, DeAnna was invited to a white nationalist recruitment meeting by former State Department official Matthew Q. Gebert.

In June, a little less than two months before his post-RNC dinner with Thiel, DeAnna received an email from Gebert inviting him and McHugh to a gathering of what appeared to be members of the white nationalist group D.C. Helicopter Pilots. The group appeared to be largely active between 2016 and 2018.

Our nucleus (about 10 sharp and accomplished goys) will meet for dinner around 6 pm in Old Town, then head out to a few bars where some prospects from the Forum will join. If your plans fall through, wed be honored to host you and the lady as special (surprise) guests for dinner, or just grab a few drinks after, Gebert wrote from a Proton Mail account associated with his Coach Finstock pseudonym on June 16, 2016.

Old Town here appears to refer to the historic district of Alexandria, Virginia.

The prospects from the Forum appears to refer to members looking to join the local chapter of TRS for which Gebert performed recruitment, as Hatewatch previously reported.

In fall 2018, this reporter received a tip from a source, then anonymous, who claimed to have information on an alleged meeting between Peter Thiel and a prominent white nationalist that took place during the 2016 election cycle. The source later revealed herself to be former Breitbart editor Katie McHugh.

In November 2018, McHugh provided Hatewatch with an image file showing an email exchange between DeAnna and Thiel. McHugh told Hatewatch that the image was a photo she had taken with her phone of DeAnnas unlocked computer in August 2016, when the two were living together in Virginia.

However, the file provided to Hatewatch was a screenshot dated November 2018, and not the original JPG file from McHughs phone. As a result, it lacked the metadata that would corroborate the time and date the photo was taken, and when/if it was backed up to either McHughs hard drive or the cloud.

Hatewatch has now been able to verify the authenticity of these images from a reconstructed archive of McHughs iCloud, which was created when McHugh backed up her phone by plugging it into her computer. Hatewatch was also able to verify images of a few other emails in the same manner.

With these cached images in hand, Hatewatch concluded McHugh conducted a backup on Sept. 15, 2016, as that is when MacOS appears to have created the cache. Hatewatch was thus able to determine that McHugh had taken this image between backups made on Aug. 5, 2016, and Sept. 15, 2016 a timeline that matched McHughs own recollection that she took the photo in early Aug. 2016.

The image appeared identical to the screenshot provided to this reporter in late 2018.

Photo illustration by SPLC

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White Nationalist Who Met With Peter Thiel Admired Terroristic Literature - Southern Poverty Law Center

I was a mere 70 pages into Donald McNeils brief about his firing from The New York Times when I emailed a dozen of my friends to demand they read it immediately. But they dont have my perseverance, so here are the highlights.

Two years after McNeil chaperoned a group of high schoolers on a trip to Peru to learn about rural health care, The Daily Beast published an article detailing the students list of denunciations against him, including the career-ending claim that hed used the N-word.

Days later, it came out that he had used the word in response to a students question about a high school girl whod been suspended from school for using the infamous word. He repeated it in order to ask how shed said it.

This paragraph, particularly the parenthetical, is all you need to know about McNeils misadventure in Peru:

At some point, a student took issue with my having said the U.S. wasnt a colonial power, saying something like: Dont you realize what the CIA has done? Dont you realize that the United Fruit Company interfered in central America to protect its banana monopoly? ... (This student herself was white, from Greenwich, CT and went to Andover but mentioned multiple times over the week that she had a Latino boyfriend and he had opened her eyes to a different view of the world ...)

None of the students on this resume-padding trip were black. There was one Asian, and the rest were white, dripping with white privilege. (Who else goes on a Princeton-bait trip to Peru in high school to learn about rural health care?) Twenty of the 22 students were girls. All appear to be complete idiots.

McNeil went on the exact same trip and gave the same lectures to a different group of high school students the summer before and got rave reviews. But the 2019 batch were in the advanced Spotting Racism class.

During McNeils struggle sessions with his interrogators at the Times, he was accused of an array of crimes against political correctness. Heres a sampling:

Charlotte (Behrendt, associate managing editor for employee relations): Did you say the word n****r on this trip?

McNeil: Yes, I did. [Explains context.]

Charlotte: Did you say theres no such thing as white privilege?

McNeil: No. Thats ridiculous ...

Charlotte: So you didnt say there was no such thing?

McNeil: No. Absolutely not. That doesnt even make any sense.

Charlotte: Did you say there is no such thing as institutional racism?

McNeil: No, I didnt ...

Charlotte: Did you say it was OK to wear blackface?

McNeil: No, I didnt.

Charlotte: Did you say climate change didnt matter because it only killed poor people?

McNeil: What? No, of course not.

Charlotte: Did you make fun of a students hometown?

McNeil: I dont think so. What hometown?

McNeils unprovoked attack on someones hometown consisted of his hearing that one student was from Boston, and saying, Nice town ... except for that baseball team. [Yankees-Red Sox rivalry ensues.]

Charlotte: Did you tell a joke about a doctor and a Jewish mother?

McNeil: A doctor and a Jewish mother ...? I dont think so ... Do you know the joke?

McNeil later remembered that hed used a stock joke from his usual speech to doctors:

I was pre-med for a year, but when I told my mother what I was thinking, she laughed and said: Donald, youre never going to be a doctor. You dont have the patience to get through medical school.

So, if any of you are wondering what its like to NOT be raised by a Jewish mother, thats pretty much it: You say you want to be a doctor, she laughs at you and says, Itll never happen.

The endless questioning of McNeils jokes and comments feels like a weird, stressful dream. But the little Nazi block watchers held a trump card: Theyd asked him about the N-word and ... HE RESPONDED!

Fired.

McNeils story goes far beyond him, a crotchety leftist, angry about people walking in parks during the COVID shutdowns. Way too much of his response consists of his submission to the woke overlords, admitting that maybe he IS a racist and denouncing his grandfather as an anti-Semite. So forget McNeil. Its Iran-Iraq.

Nonetheless, his story gives readers a terrifying glimpse of the next generation of grim conformists being pumped out by the nations education establishment.

These holy terrors are tormenting newsrooms across New York City at New York magazine, The New Yorker and The New York Times. They are true believers, not original thinkers race-obsessed, gender-obsessed, anti-white, anti-American, and much, much stupider than reporters used to be. Just tell me what Im supposed to think and Ill think it. These are the sort of people who ought to be office managers ordering staples and mousepads, not people who report news.

These sourpuss zealots are in such a mad race to show their wokeness, they are useless as conduits for the news. What they do isnt reporting. Its terrorism.

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Ann Coulter: Attack of the woke teen career killers - Today's News-Herald

Editors note: The death of Rush Limbaugh, the growth of Newsmax and charges of censorship by Amazon and other book sellers are among the forces shaking up conservative media companies. In this three-part series, the Deseret News examines the challenges facing radio, television and book publishing, and how those challenges might affect the companies and you: the reader, listener and viewer.

Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley lost a book deal. Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling lost fans. And now, even as a prospective merger of two large publishing houses in the U.S. is rattling the industry, Amazon is deleting content it deems offensive from the worlds largest platform for book sales.

In this tumultuous landscape, can conservative authors still continue to speak freely and sell books?

Yes, publishers say, but they may have to change the way they do business in a culture newly cognizant of the power to cancel people with unpopular opinions.

We dont let it directly determine what we publish, but the fact is, with every book, there is always fear that the book is going to be pulled. The authors feel very vulnerable, said David Bernstein, publisher of Bombardier Books, a conservative imprint of Post Hill Press.

Conservative fears were realized this month when the book When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment, by Catholic scholar Ryan T. Anderson, vanished from the Amazon website three years after it was published.

Four Republican senators, including Utahs Mike Lee, called the action political censorship, saying in a letter to CEO Jeff Bezos that Amazon has openly signaled to conservative Americans that their views are not welcome on its platforms.

But the controversy over Andersons book is only the latest action troubling conservative writers and publishers. Others include the cancellation of a forthcoming Hawley book critical of technology companies by Simon & Schuster, protests against a new book by Canadian psychologist and author Jordan Peterson, and an open letter signed by people in the publishing industry who say no one affiliated with former President Donald Trumps administration should get a book contract.

The tremors shaking book publishing usually go undetected by the public, since the average reader only pays attention to the book, its content and the author, not the company that publishes a book, said Thomas Spence, who became president and publisher of Regnery Publishing a year ago.

Regnery, founded in 1947, has published books by Ann Coulter, Newt Gingrich, Michelle Malkin and Dennis Prager, among other conservatives well acquainted with controversy. Regnerys success was a major reason that the largest publishing houses in the U.S. established their own conservative imprints, publishing insiders say.

But the outcry against authors who express unpopular beliefs is growing louder in the environment known as cancel culture, and some writers are warning that recent events will effectively muzzle conservatives. The backlash to Amazons decision, however, suggests that the outlook for conservative publishing is still bright. Heres why.

Andersons book, described by author Rod Dreher as a well-written, scientifically informed critique of gender ideology by a leading Catholic public intellectual, is still for sale on the website of the publisher, Encounter Books, as well as on the Barnes & Noble website and other places online.

Anderson, who recently became president of the Ethics & Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., told Dreher, writing for The American Conservative, that he has sold a couple of thousand books in the past week, adding this is unheard of for a three-year-old book.

He noted that Amazons action came at the same time Congress was considering the Equality Act and suggested that Amazons action has a silver lining, which is this could be (the) further catalyst thatll interrupt the libertarian slumber of many conservatives and prompt them to think critically about what, for example, the natural law says about both the justification of and limits to economic liberties.

Author Abigail Shrier is not as optimistic. Shrier, a journalist whose book Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, has been removed twice from the Target website, wrote that the Amazon case is dangerous because of the outsized influence the company wields in publishing.

As a direct result of Amazons action, many outstanding books will now go unwritten; they will not be commissioned whenever Amazons distribution is the slightest bit in doubt. As I write this, authors are being dropped by agents or politely refused representation, based on what the agents now know Amazon will not carry, Shrier wrote.

Shriers book, however, is still listed on Amazon, as is God and the Transgender Debate, an examination of what the Bible has to say about gender by Southern Baptist theologian Andrew T. Walker.

So is a take on Andersons book, Let Harry Become Sally, an e-book by Kelly R. Novak that Amazon billed last week as a #1 best seller.

Amazon has not given a specific reason for removing Andersons book, saying only that the company reserves the right to delist content that violates its standards.

In an email, Anderson said this could be a moment that determines how the company will operate going forward. If Amazon hears from enough people, perhaps that will lead it to reconsider its decision and not just on me, but also preventing future de-platforming. If Amazon gets away with this, itll likely lead to more de-platforming in the future.

While Anderson can only speculate about the reasons his book is no longer on Amazon, Hawley, the Missouri senator, knows why Simon & Schuster canceled his book contract because the company put out a statement. Without giving specifics, the publisher said that Hawley, a Trump supporter who was the first senator to say he would challenge the 2020 election results, had a role in the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

As a publisher it will always be our mission to amplify a variety of voices and viewpoints; at the same time, we take seriously our larger public responsibility as citizens, and cannot support Senator Hawley after his role in what became a dangerous threat to our democracy and freedom, the statement said.

Hawleys book deal was canceled the day after the riot. The next week, more than 250 authors, editors, agents and other workers in publishing signed an open letter that said no companies should publish work by anyone who incited, suborned, instigated or otherwise supported the riot, or who was a participant in the Trump administration. The number of signers is now approaching 600.

But within two weeks, Hawley had another publisher in Regnery, and Spence explained the decision in an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, in which he said cancel culture is more appropriately described as blacklisting.

Not so long ago, publishing professionals would have been horrified to be accused of it. Today they compete to see who can proclaim his blacklist with the fiercest invective, Spence wrote.

So far, Amazon hasnt been inclined to cancel Hawleys book; its accepting pre-orders for The Tyranny of Big Tech and gives a release date of May 4.

Spence said hed been following Hawleys career knew he was a Yale Law School graduate and was a former Supreme Court clerk and had thought it would be nice to have a book from him before this one essentially landed in his lap. A lot of people have sent me emails saying, Oh, youre so courageous, thanks for taking a stand and taking this book, and I have to blush. I think I did the right thing, but I dont know that it was particularly courageous in this case, he said.

Getting canceled by Simon & Schuster has raised the profile of the book a lot, he added.

That has happened before, said Bernstein of Bombardier Books. When Simon & Schuster canceled a book by Milo Yiannopoulos in 2017, the far-right commentator self-published Dangerous and sold upwards of 100,000 copies, Bernstein said.

Donald Trump Jr. also self-published his second book, Liberal Privilege.

Bernstein said that conservative imprints such as Center Street at Hachette Book Group or Sentinel at Penguin are ghettos within the largest publishing houses, which he said skew young and liberal. The problem with conservative books within the large publishing houses is that theyre not going to support you if there is any controversy. The first whiff of controversy, Josh Hawley gets his book canceled. The first whiff of controversy, (Florida GOP Congressman) Matt Gaetz gets his book canceled. The editors get fired or get shifted around. Or the imprint gets closed. All of these things are happening at an increasing pace right now.

The New York Times recently reported that longtime editor Kate Hartson, editorial director at Center Street, had been let go and that Hartson told colleagues she thought her termination was because of her political beliefs. She had published books by Donald Trump Jr., Newt Gingrich, radio host Michael Savage and Rand Paul, among others. Her most recent book was reported to be Unmasked: Inside Antifas Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy, by Andy Ngo.

Not every objection to an author results in a book being canceled. When Penguin Random House Canada announced that it was publishing Jordan Petersons Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life, the company had to hold a town-hall style meeting for employees who were upset about the decision. It was published anyway. (In the U.S., the book was released March 2 under Penguins Portfolio imprint.)

And some authors, like J.K. Rowling, have the benefit of being too successful to be truly canceled, Bernstein said. Her position in publishing is kind of untouchable. When you make up that much of a companys bottom line shes like a line item of her own on their balance sheet no company is going to release her and give up that revenue.

For many conservative authors, however, the fear of being de-platformed is real, whether it be on a sales platform or social media.

Frankly, the number of books that get pulled off of Amazon is infinitesimal, but these stories get magnified and people are rightly concerned, because the number of people being de-platformed on Twitter started off being very small, too, Bernstein said.

Small conservative imprints such as Bombardier may benefit from the current environment if authors seek publishers who share their views. But so may Regnery, whose namesake, the late Henry Regnery, published Memoirs of a Dissident Publisher in 1979.

Spence, who said his views were shaped by the First Things essay Why the News Make Us Dumb by C. John Sommerville and The Conservative Mind by Russell Kirk, welcomes the business, although he realizes that this may be a particularly vulnerable moment for conservative publishers.

Certain big players in the publishing world have the power to make our business very difficult if they want to. Thats Amazon and Google, all the people targeted by Josh Hawleys book, and maybe Im stupid to be publishing a book punching them in the nose, Spence said.

If we couldnt sell our books on Amazon, that would be a pretty serious blow. We sell most of our books on Amazon. What they have done on rare occasions is make it more difficult for people to find our books. He cited Shriers book, which Regnery published. The company wanted to buy ads that would make the book more prominent in searches, but Spence said that Amazon would not let them buy ads for that book.

Spence is also cognizant of the power of Facebook and Twitter, and that social media platforms could also take action to block promotion of one of his authors or books.

Theres a lot of potential hazards on the road ahead, he said. But its also good times for Regnery, because theres no such thing as bad publicity. Controversy is good.

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Is Amazon allowed to censor conservative books? - Deseret News