DeSantis' Wife Appeared at South Florida Event Alongside Obama "Birther" Tied to Extremist Group

Florida's Republican gubernatorial candidate Ron DeSantis not only has said and done racist things but also continues getting caught hanging out with racist nutjobs. New Times in April disclosed that he spoke at a virulently anti-Muslim event with Steve Bannon and Milo Yiannopoulos in 2017. Then the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting found that DeSantis appeared at a Muslim-bashing event run by even more insanely racist people last October.

Now there's more: DeSantis' wife Casey showed up at an event in South Florida this past Tuesday night alongside Trevor Loudon, a batshit-insane conservative commentator and author who, much like John Birch Society conspiracy theorists of long ago, believes that basically all nonwhite people and Democratic politicians are part of a communist conspiracy to destroy America. Loudon, who is originally from New Zealand, has not only endorsed the Birch Society but also authored pieces for the Center for Security Policy, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank that the Southern Poverty Law Center lists as an anti-Muslim "extremist group." After the 2017 Charlottesville Unite the Right rally, Loudon's website published an article claiming the neo-Nazis and white supremacists who organized the rally (and killed a woman) were left-wing communists. Loudon also founded KeyWiki, a Wikipedia-style website where users can look up which progressive groups Loudon has linked to communist crime-doers. (Hint: It's all of them.)

Perhaps more to the point, Loudon in 2015 claimed in a rambling, paranoid blog post there was proof Barack Obama was born in Kenya and carried a Kenyan birth certificate.

"From his days as a candidate in the Democrat primary, the place of Obama’s birth has been in contention," Loudon wrote that year. "While Obama has insisted he was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1961, there are others who claim he was born in Mombasa, Kenya; there’s even a copy of his purported Kenyan birth certificate. Moreover, apparently trustworthy sources swear that the Long Form Birth Certificate is a forgery."

Loudon and Casey DeSantis appeared at a meeting of the Broward Women's Republican Club at a Fort Lauderdale Olive Garden. A spokesperson for DeSantis' campaign did not respond to a message yesterday from New Times asking whether it endorses Loudon's many paranoid, anticommunist, and racist ramblings. Photos posted online show that both Casey DeSantis and Loudon spoke at the event. One attendee wrote online that Loudon "gave an amazing presentation on what is at stake for the next three election cycles," while "Casey DeSantis gave a great campaign update."

Of course, Loudon's views are both insane and increasingly normal for the 2018 Republican Party. The so-called birther conspiracy theory is just that — a racist, debunked idea designed to discredit the nation's first black president (a theory once shared by Donald Trump). Loudon included that birther tidbit in a pages-long rant about how "Barack Hussein Obama" was effectively groomed by evil Marxist-Leninists who hate America.

"With such little authentic biography available, we are forced to define Obama by his friends," Loudon wrote. "They include financial and political manipulators and fixers, corrupt businessmen and international criminals, card-carrying communists and FBI-identified enemies of the state, terrorists foreign and domestic, and their academic apologists."

Loudon also thinks the Black Lives Matter movement is a communist front, and once shared an article (written by someone else) that was simply a list of negative stories about black people to commemorate the opening of Washington, D.C.'s African-American History Museum.

But the rest of Loudon's oeuvre is equally bonkers. He once put together a documentary titled Soviet Islam that claims the KGB intentionally spread Islamic terror around the world. Naturally, the conservative site the Daily Caller gave the documentary a glowing review and called it a "must-watch."

Loudon's blog contains an entire "radical Islam" vertical where he spews crazy anti-Muslim bile to this day. His Facebook page is also a trove of insanity: On August 23, he shared a video accusing Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine, one of the most boring men in politics, of having ties to Islamic terror groups. Loudon is the author of The Enemies Within, which says an alleged group of secret communists "won big" by instituting Obamacare and immigration reform. Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck apparently love Loudon's work.

He also shared articles (written by other people) lamenting the "Gay Thought Police" and describing pro-gay-marriage activism as a "Trojan horse movement aimed at the heart of our constitution." In 2015, Loudon's website published a third-party article warning against receiving blood transfusions from "the diseased blood of sexually active homosexuals."

Loudon has also written papers for the Center for Security Policy, an anti-Muslim "think tank" run by Frank Gaffney Jr., who in 2016 reportedly advised Trump's transition team. Last month, Loudon published a 21-page "study" for the Center for Security Policy claiming communist sympathizers in the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party were enabling the region's burgeoning "Sharia-supremacism."

"The Minnesota left can be relied upon to promote and defend Islamic activists at every opportunity," Loudon wrote last month. "Minnesota’s Marxists and socialists have prepared the way for Islamization. That process is now at a tipping point. Minnesotans are in the middle of a last-ditch battle to save their state."

Should those who believe in supremacy of Sharia law be granted citizenship in America?

— Trevor Loudon (@newzealblog) June 2, 2017

Loudon has self-published a 17-part "investigation" claiming George Soros and San Francisco "stealth socialist" Steve Phillips are mounting a conspiracy to "harvest the huge reservoir of nonvoting black and Latino voters for Democratic candidates" and elect Democrats around the country.

"Given the Democrats’ heavy top-to-bottom Marxist infiltration, flipping Texas to their camp would usher in a permanent one-party socialist state," Loudon wrote this past July 26. "San Francisco lawyer and stealth socialist Steve Phillips is aiming to do just that. Working with leftist mega-donors from the secretive Democracy Alliance and his own organizations, Steve Phillips has set up mass voter registration programs in several states to sign up millions of new minority voters."

(Perhaps the funniest moment on Loudon's website was the time he tried to make Ted Cruz look good by showing the Texas senator's vampire-potato body attempting to play basketball.)

Thankfully, there are two people Loudon has endorsed to save us from all of these insane communist schemes: He has endorsed both Donald Trump and — you guessed it — Ron DeSantis.

"Florida gubernatorial candidate Ron DeSantis is the real deal," Loudon wrote in July. "He’ll make a great governor for the Sunshine State."

Update: Per Media Matters reporter Natalie Martinez, Loudon is also an admin in the very same racist Tea Party Facebook group that DeSantis was caught running:

Ron DeSantis may no longer be listed as an admin of the extremist Facebook group Tea Party, but his wife is hanging out with another admin, the racist conspiracy theorist Trevor Loudon. https://t.co/tnFAaAWF4O pic.twitter.com/oKUzae65lF

— Natalie Martinez (@natijomartinez) September 20, 2018