‘That’s Taking It Too Far’: Former Trump Speechwriter with Alleged Ties to White Nationalism Faces Backlash for Mocking Emmett Till In Response to Democrats Calling J.D. Vance ‘Weird’
A former speechwriter for Donald Trump, fired from the White House in 2018 over his ties to white nationalism, ignited a social media frenzy this week by mocking the lynching of Emmett Till in response to a growing wave of criticism from Democrats accusing Republicans of being “weird.”
Darren J. Beattie, a well-known conspiracy theorist and Trump supporter, chose a highly sensitive subject within the Black community to counter the viral talking point by Democrats, who began dismissing Republicans as “weird” due to controversial statements by Trump’s running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance, who has taken issue with women who don’t have children.
“Emmet Till was weird,” Beattie wrote on the social media platform X, dishonoring Till by purposely misspelling his first name.
Unable to mount an effective comeback to the “weird” label by Democrats, Beattie turned to his old playbook of tropes and dog whistles, aiming to inflame racial tensions by referring to Till, likely knowing it would stoke strong reactions from the Black community and civil rights proponents.
The next day, Beattie defended his remarks in a second tweet.
“To be a fly on the wall in millenial girlboss focus group in which ‘weird’ narrowly edged out ‘super sketch’ as the rhetorical term of choice to attack Trump supporters,” he wrote without clarifying himself.
As of Thursday morning, Beattie’s post about Till had been viewed more than 372,000 times, while 411 users had reposted it, with many white Americans expressing cold indifference to the vicious murder of an innocent child.
Till, a 14-year-old Black boy from Chicago, was kidnapped, brutally tortured and murdered in one night in August 1955 by men in Drew, Mississippi, who accused the boy of whistling at a white woman during his summer vacation with relatives.
His mutilated body was found days later on a riverbank, with crushed bones and a face that was unrecognizable.
The crime shocked the nation and galvanized the civil rights movement after Till’s mother insisted on an open casket so the world could “see what they did to my boy.”
Two of Till’s killers — the husband and brother-in-law of the woman — were arrested and faced a sham trial in which they were acquitted by an all-white jury despite overwhelming evidence of their guilt — highlighting the systemic injustices faced by Black people in the Jim Crow South nearly 100 years after the end of slavery.
Back on social media, Beattie’s inappropriate embrace of the term “weird” coincided with the increasing use of the word by Democrats in recent days, which enraged conservatives as Vance seemingly fit the bill after he doubled down on his outlandish suggestion that women with no kids are like “childless cat ladies” with a lesser stake in the future of America. Vance has responded to criticism by saying he “has nothing against cats.”
Over the past month, the Trump campaign has been busy trying to mop up the mess left by his controversial statements.
In another sign of the times, recent grumbling among GOP supporters suggests that the “weird” stigma was part of a CIA-led conspiracy to hurt Trump’s reelection chances, according to reports.
Following Beattie’s insensitive remark about Till, Democratic advocates quickly seized on what they saw as an overblown reaction from Republicans, who not only pulled the race card but exploited an open wound in the Black community that has persisted for nearly 70 years.
As one user put it: “The reaction from these people to the ‘weird’ thing is like pulling out a gun and shooting your friend after he pinches you on St. Patrick’s for not wearing green.”
Other voices were left stunned by Beattie’s outrageous comments.
“Yeah, you’re really proving how not weird & racist you all are with this kind of stuff,” @bornposting wrote.
Some suggested that the best thing to do was to step back and let Trump supporters like Beattie dig their own graves by showing their true colors.
“Please keep posting like this under your real name and credentials to 200k+ followers,” wrote @ms_shrimpz. “You guys are doing great work.”
Beattie’s post also stirred up a number of conservatives; some voices in his replies pushed back.
“That’s taking it too far,” said @PsyReport, calling for decorum over cruelty. “Emmett was a kid.”
However, most commenters supported Beattie’s post with their own racist remarks, invoking the names of other Black victims whose names have become synonymous with the Black Lives Matter movement.
“George Floyd was weird,” one user wrote.
“Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin were weird,” another person said from behind their screen.
Critics argue that Beattie’s anger over the word “weird” likely emerged from his lobbying efforts that helped to boost Vance’s candidacy as Trump’s vice presidential pick, especially since Vance has been the main target of the “weird” accusations.
The situation also hinted at Beattie’s continued influence in conservative circles and sudden reemergence in political discourse despite being terminated from his speechwriting job at the White House six years ago.
In August 2018, then-President Trump fired Beattie as White House speechwriter after the media put Beattie on blast for his participation in a speaking conference alongside prominent white nationalists two years earlier.
Beattie was working as a visiting instructor at Duke University when he attended the 2016 H.L. Mencken Club conference, where he spoke on a panel alongside Peter Brimelow, the founder of the anti-immigrant site Vdare.com.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors extremist activities, Brimelow is a “white nationalist” who frequently publishes works by white supremacists, anti-Semites, and other radical right figures.
Beattie was a major supporter of Trump’s 2016 campaign, which punched his ticket into the administration to write Trump’s speeches, which were notorious for controversial viewpoints on immigration, as well as policy positions that ignored systemic racial issues in law enforcement.
But Beattie’s tenure would be short-lived.
Just a year into Trump’s term, Beattie’s appearance at the conference alongside a white nationalist put pressure on the Oval Office, and he was asked to resign immediately.
However, Beattie refused, claiming he was not racist and that he had only made harmless academic points at the Mencken gathering.
When it became evident that Beattie would not step down voluntarily, the White House decided to terminate him.
Earlier this year, Brimelow identified himself as a proponent of “racial nationalism,” predicting that the future of the United States would increasingly divide along racial lines.