Andrew Kaczynski, CNN, August 19, 2108

A speechwriter for President Donald Trump who attended a conference frequented by white nationalists has left the White House.

CNN’s KFile reached out to the White House last week about Darren Beattie, a policy aide and speechwriter, who was listed as speaking at the 2016 H.L. Mencken Club Conference.

The Mencken Club, which is named for the early 20th century journalist and satirist whose posthumously published diaries revealed racist views, is a small annual conference started in 2008 and regularly attended by well-known white nationalists such as Richard Spencer. The schedule for the 2016 conference listed panels and speeches by white nationalist Peter Brimelow and two writers, John Derbyshire and Robert Weissberg, who were both fired in 2012 from the conservative magazine National Review for espousing racist views.

Other speakers from the 2016 conference are regular contributors to the white nationalist website VDare. Jared Taylor, another leading white nationalist, can be heard at the conference in 2016 on Derbyshire’s radio show along with Brimelow.

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Beattie confirmed to CNN he spoke to the 2016 conference, saying his speech was not objectionable.

“In 2016 I attended the Mencken conference in question and delivered a stand-alone, academic talk titled ‘The Intelligentsia and the Right.’ I said nothing objectionable and stand by my remarks completely,” he told CNN’s KFile in an email on Saturday. {snip}

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As a professor, Beattie wrote an editorial for Duke’s student newspaper in support of the travel ban and has said he supported Trump’s candidacy from the beginning, citing his position on immigration.