Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-MT) is flailing after appearing in a photograph with prominent white nationalists, reported the Daily Montanan on Monday.
"The photo appeared on Friday on a Telegram account, controlled by prominent white nationalist Greyson Arnold, and shows four other men standing by Rosendale. The group includes another well-known white supremacist Ryan Sanchez. The other two men standing with Rosendale could not be immediately identified," reported Darrell Ehrlick. "Both Arnold and Sanchez have posted recently about being in Washington D.C., at the invitation of a member of Congress, but have not said who invited them. And while the group may not have been known to Rosendale, they are well known to other members of Congress and the Republican Party."
Arnold runs the site "Pure Politics," a white supremacist channel. He has advocated shooting refugees and migrants, praised Hitler as “a complicated historical figure which many people misunderstand,” and promoted content saying Nazis were a "pure race" and Jewish people "led colored hordes of the Earth" in a plot to exterminate White people.
Rosendale vehemently denies this photograph was a planned event.
“I absolutely condemn and have zero tolerance for hate groups, hate speech and violence,” Rosendale told the Daily Montanan in an email. “I did not take a meeting with these individuals. I was asked for a photo while walking between hearings, accommodating as I do for all photo requests, and was not aware of the individuals’ identity or affiliation with these hate groups that stand in stark contrast to my personal beliefs.”
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This is not the first time Republicans have been caught associating with Arnold; the Washington State Republican Party briefly put in on their payroll, and failed congressional candidate Joe Kent took a meeting with him.
The far-right fringes of the pro-Trump caucus have gotten into several controversies for their association with neo-Nazis and white nationalists. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) attended a conference hosted by Nick Fuentes, a Hitler sympathizer and the founder of the "Groyper Movement," an online network of activists who seek to inject white supremacy into mainstream politics. Turmp himself later went on to take a dinner meeting with Fuentes at his Mar-a-Lago residence, which caused bitter division in the GOP as some Trump allies leapt to condemn the event and distance themselves.
