(JTA) — Secretary of State Marco Rubio promoted an interview this week with a conservative influencer who has praised Hitler online, in the latest example of a Trump official conversing with a white nationalist figure.
Michael Benz, who served in the State Department in Trump’s first term, revealed in 2023 he was the author of “Frame Game,” an alt-right account that has for years posted rants about “the Jewish influence in the West” and promoted the idea that Jews have orchestrated a mass ethnic replacement.
“Let me be clear: I am extremely proud of this,” Benz, who is Jewish, told NBC News after being questioned about the links between himself and the account. He described Frame Game as “a project by Jews to get people who hated Jews to stop hating Jews.”
Speaking to Rubio on Wednesday in a talk released by the State Department, Benz quizzed him on how the department would be changing its approach to free-speech issues under Trump. Benz praised the secretary for what he called “restoring free speech and America’s role as the beacon of free speech,” while Rubio criticized what he described as “disinformation” produced by the news media.
Revocation of international student visas
Under Rubio the State Department has engaged in sweeping revocations of international student visas, in an initiative the secretary has described as part of the administration’s fight against antisemitism. He revoked one student’s visa for writing a student newspaper op-ed critical of Israel, and in another case he has argued that “otherwise lawful” speech could still be prosecuted if it enabled antisemitism.
But Benz and Rubio did not discuss Jews or antisemitism in their talk about free-speech issues.
Instead, the two men praised Darren Beattie, a Rubio staffer who, like Benz, was a Jewish first-term Trump official with extremist links. Benz alleged that Beattie, who had been fired from the first Trump administration after the Anti-Defamation League criticized his appearance at a white nationalist-adjacent conference, had been “targeted” by a “network” being “paid through the State Department through grants and contracts.”
Rubio agreed with this assessment, adding that “Darren will be big involved” in future State Department efforts to “document what happened” during the Biden administration.
In August 2017, around the time of the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where one counter-protester was killed, Benz, as Frame Game, wrote a long blog post in which he promoted Holocaust skepticism and anti-Israel sentiment. He also stated, “If I, a Jew, a member of the Tribe, Hebrew Schooled, can read Mein Kampf & think ‘holy s**t, Hitler actually had some decent points.’ Then NO ONE is safe from hating you once they find out who is behind the White genocide happening all over the world.”
The following year, Benz joined the Trump administration first as a speechwriter for Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson. He moved to the State Department in 2020, and during the Biden administration launched a conservative free-speech organization.
Benz has also held several interviews with avowed white nationalists, and has been promoted by Richard Spencer, while YouTube issued several extremism warnings on his content. He has also garnered the ear of President Donald Trump’s top advisor: Elon Musk has promoted and replied to Benz’s posts on Twitter in the past, on a range of subjects including Ukraine and elections.
