The Claremont Institute triumphed in the Trump years. Then came Jan. 6.

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washingtonpost.com
The Claremont Institute triumphed in the Trump years. Then came Jan. 6.
The role of Trump lawyer John Eastman in trying to overturn the 2020 election has divided the followers of the Claremont Institute, which has stood by him.
12:36 PM · Jul 24, 2022

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/24/claremont-john-eastman-trump/

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https://archive.ph/WyyBs


CLAREMONT, Calif. — Early in 2016, as Donald Trump’s march toward the Republican presidential nomination gathered the air of inevitability, alumni of a conservative think tank nestled here at the base of Southern California’s San Gabriel Mountains received an email with a tough question: Was it time for supporters of the Claremont Institute to help make Trump president?

“I’d sooner cut off my arm with a rusty spoon!” replied Nathan Harden, an editor at RealClearEducation, an offshoot of the political site RealClearPolitics, according to emails obtained by The Washington Post.

Others were interested, however. “I’m graduating this May and would very much like to get involved,” wrote Darren Beattie, a philosophy graduate student who would later work in Trump’s White House, until he was fired in 2018, after revelations that he had attended a conference with white nationalists. Harden declined to comment. Beattie did not respond to requests for comment.

The next four years would revolutionize the role of the Claremont Institute and a handful of other intellectual institutions that preach an America-first, originalist ideology. The institute — along with its journal, the Claremont Review of Books, as well as related journals such as American Greatness, and allied organizations, including Michigan’s Hillsdale College — gained influence during Trump’s tenure, funneling ideas and personnel to the administration despite Trump’s lifelong suspicion of academics and other experts.

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Later, as The Post prepared to publish this story, Williams, 40, who has risen through the institute’s ranks since graduating from Hillsdale College in 2004, sent an emailed statement that read, in part: “We’re proud of what we do at the Claremont Institute; for over 40 years, our scholarship and teaching have had a positive and substantive effect on the nation’s political discourse. … That said, the Claremont Institute is not interested in participating in the fiction that the Washington Post is a legitimate media outlet, or that its chronically discredited journalists are dispassionate fact-finders intent on bringing their readers objective news.”

The institute came to fill the ranks of its fellowship programs, which admit about 30 people a year, with pro-Trump influencers, such as Charlie Kirk, the founder and president of Turning Point USA; Jack Posobiec, who once promoted the false Pizzagate conspiracy theory; and Raheem Kassam, a former Breitbart News editor and Bannon acolyte.

Meanwhile, some institute leaders adopted a rougher rhetorical style, seemingly inspired in part by Trump. Williams, the institute’s president, launches Twitter fusillades about “tyrannical left-liberalism” and “unmanly liberalism” and shares GOP talking points labeling testimony about Trump’s conduct on Jan. 6 a “hoax.” Williams was awarded a National Humanities Medal by Trump in 2019.

Former fellows include Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), right-wing filmmaker and commentator Dinesh D’Souza, Fox News host Laura Ingraham, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat and conservative podcaster Ben Shapiro.
After Jan. 6, the institute’s fellowships still attract prominent conservatives, including Kirk of Turning Point USA; Anthony Sabatini, a member of the Florida House of Representatives and an ally of Gov. Ron DeSantis (R); and Jack Murphy, a podcaster who runs a men’s group called Liminal Order.

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