Joe Arpaio
Joshua Lott / Reuters
Then-Sheriff Joe Arpaio speaks during a news conference at his headquarters in Phoenix, Aug. 31, 2012.
Joe Arpaio, the former Arizona sheriff
pardoned by Trump after a conviction for criminal contempt, is running for U.S. Senate in Arizona. He gained national notoriety for
terrorizing Maricopa County’s Latino population. He unlawfully rounded up and detained people he accused of being in the U.S. illegally,
segregating Latino inmates into a jail he called a “concentration camp.” (Some 160 people
died in Arpaio’s jails, many of them by suicide.)
In a January interview with HuffPost, Arpaio
repeatedly refused to condemn the American Free Press, an anti-Semitic publication founded by a Nazi sympathizer that claims the Holocaust never happened. Arpaio has granted five interviews to the American Free Press, most recently in January.
Steve King
Brian C. Frank / Reuters
Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) speaks at the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition Forum in Des Moines, Iowa, Sept. 19, 2015.
Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) is an eight-term congressman up for re-election this year.
In December, King tweeted “diversity is not our strength” ― a
phrase borrowed from white supremacists, who have used it for years. David Duke, Peter Brimelow, Billy Roper and others have all said “diversity is not our strength” in interviews and speeches.
King has a history of signaling support for white nationalism. He keeps a Confederate flag on his desk, although he is from Iowa, which was not part of the Confederacy. He once said America
shouldn’t apologize for slavery. He also claims, incorrectly, that Obama was born in Kenya.
He once tweeted a photo of himself standing with Geert Wilders, the far-right Dutch politician known for his anti-Muslim animus, with the caption “Cultural suicide by demographic transformation must end.”
And in March 2017, King tweeted: “Wilders understands that culture and demographics are our destiny. We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.”
After that tweet, neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin wrote on his popular white supremacist site, The Daily Stormer, that “Steve King is basically an open white nationalist at this point.”
Corey Stewart
Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Corey Stewart is seen in July 2017.
Corey Stewart is running for U.S. Senate in Virginia. He was narrowly defeated in the Republican primary for the state’s governor race after focusing his campaign on the preservation of Confederate monuments.
During his 2017 run for governor, Stewart
made several joint appearances with white supremacist Jason Kessler, the organizer of the deadly Charlottesville rally.
After that rally, Stewart chastised his fellow Republicans for criticizing the white nationalists, saying violent people on the left were also to blame for the violence.
Matt Gaetz
Alex Wong via Getty Images
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) speaks to reporters in Washington, D.C., Dec. 6, 2017.
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.)
invited Chuck Johnson, a notorious far-right troll who has said he identifies with the alt-right, to the State of the Union in January.
Johnson is a Holocaust denier famous for being permanently banned from Twitter for threatening to “take out” a civil rights activist. He’s also helped raise money for Anglin, the Daily Stormer publisher.
“He is not guilty of the things that some people have charged him of as it relates to those claims,” Gaetz
said of Johnson. “He’s a controversial figure, there are plenty of controversial folks at the State of the Union. I don’t just cavort with people who hold my views.”
Gaetz, up for re-election in 2018, is no stranger to extremists. In January, he was a
guest on Alex Jones’ “InfoWars” program, despite Jones’ history of promoting wild conspiracy theories and making bigoted remarks about Jews and Muslims.
Dana Rohrabacher
Maxim Shemetov / Reuters
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) is also up for re-election in 2018, and also has connections to Chuck Johnson. The California congressman reportedly
brought Johnson to Capitol Hill for a meeting last year. Johnson reportedly then helped arrange a meeting between Rohrabacher and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
Lou Barletta
BRYAN R. SMITH via Getty Images
Rep. Lou Barletta (R-Pa.) is seen in November 2016.
Rep. Lou Barletta (R-Pa.) is running for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania. In 2006, when he was mayor of Hazleton, Pennsylvania, Barletta
granted an interview to the American Free Press, the same anti-Semitic publication that Joe Arpaio has spoken to.
Barletta also once held a rally with musician Paul Topete, who is known for promoting
anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
Clarification: Language in this story has been updated to clarify that Corey Stewart was defeated in the primary and not general race for governor of Virginia.