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Now It’s Trump Adviser Larry Kudlow Rubbing Elbows With a White Nationalist

Top economic aide invited Vdare.com founder to a birthday party

Director of the National Economic Council Larry Kudlow talks to journalists outside the White House West Wing on Aug. 16. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Director of the National Economic Council Larry Kudlow talks to journalists outside the White House West Wing on Aug. 16. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

The White House last week likely unknowingly put itself in a difficult predicament by firing a speechwriter who spoke on a panel in 2016 with a publisher of white nationalist views.

On Tuesday evening, The Washington Post reported that President Donald Trump’s top economic adviser hosted that same publisher at his home the day after the speechwriter was fired.

Larry Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council, admitted to the Post that Peter Brimelow attended his birthday gathering Saturday at his Connecticut home and that he’s been coming to his dinner parties there for years.

Brimelow, a former writer for Dow Jones and National Review who lives in Connecticut, founded the anti-immigration website Vdare.com in 1999. The platform features writings promoting white nationalist views.

Kudlow described Brimelow as someone he has known “forever,” going back to their work in financial journalism, but said he was unfamiliar with Brimelow’s promotion of white nationalists on Vdare.com

“If I had known this, we would never have invited him,” Kudlow said. “I’m disappointed and saddened to hear about it.”

Kudlow told the Post that Brimelow’s views on immigration and race are “a side of Peter that I don’t know, and I totally, utterly disagree with that point of view and have my whole life. I’m a civil rights Republican.”

The White House speechwriter, Darren Beattie, was fired Friday after a media inquiry about his appearance speaking on a panel alongside Brimelow at the 2016 H.L. Mencken Club conference, the Post reported Sunday.

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