(JTA) – The Minnesota Republican Party has endorsed a podcaster running for Senate who has employed conspiratorial rhetoric about “the Jewish lobby.”
Royce White, a former professional basketball player turned right-wing podcaster, won the state party’s endorsement at its convention over the weekend. More than two-thirds of the delegates voted to endorse White, though the state party said its endorsement came with “reservation.”
White is running against several other GOP hopefuls, including a former naval intelligence officer. The winner of the Aug. 13 primary will face incumbent Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar.
The 33-year-old White, who was introduced at the convention by former Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon, once described himself as an “antisemite” on his own Twitter profile, along with other labels including “Blackface, Extremist, Cis-Male, Sexist, Misogynist, Homophobic, Transphobic.” (Justifying those epithets to a critic over the weekend, he said, “I was listing all the things I’ve been called by people like you.”)
White has also defended the rapper Ye, formerly Kanye West, from the charge of antisemitism after Ye praised Hitler and made a series of public antisemitic remarks in the fall of 2022. At the time, during a broader discussion of Ye’s comments, White said Jews focus on the Holocaust “to provide a victimhood cover for their own corrupt practices.”
More than a year later, he has continued to defend Ye.
“When Kanye West spoke against Israel and the Jewish lobby he was called antisemitic by the left,” White tweeted in November 2023. “They called Kanye West antisemitic because he was pushing a Black Republican or Conservative message wrapped in the gospel.”
After stating that “nobody has a general problem with Jews” in a tweet during the fall of 2022, he added, “There is a group of Jewish elite, that tends to be secular in belief and corrupt in political practice.” Around that same time, he shared a video interview with Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss of the anti-Zionist haredi Orthodox Neturei Karta sect, calling him “a real Jew, giving the real Jewish belief on these matters.”
“Why are the black hats never heard when these controversies come up?” Royce added.
Since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war on Oct 7, Royce has also opposed his own party’s “unwavering support for Israel,” calling Israel “the lynchpin of the New World Order.”
He has been criticized by the organization and Twitter account StopAntisemitism in the past.
Requests for comment to the White campaign and the Minnesota GOP were not immediately returned. White previously ran for Congress in 2022, aiming to oppose Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, but placed second in his district’s GOP primary.
A former basketball player, he had a brief NBA career but was sidelined by a generalized anxiety disorder that he said made it difficult for him to travel. His politics have been difficult to pin down: He also led racial-justice protests after the 2020 murder of George Floyd and has spoken out against the Uyghur genocide.
If he wins the Republican primary, White faces an uphill climb. No Republican has won statewide office in Minnesota since 2006, and the statewide party was recently short on cash.
But on Twitter over the weekend, at least one Jew seemed open to backing him. Naomi Litvin, an Israeli-American self-published author and Trump supporter who has attacked Israeli critics of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on social media, initially sounded the alarm on White’s endorsement before he responded, “Jews agree with me. Black and Jews, stop being used.”
Litvin then told White, “I am against globalism as much as you are,” and “I hope you make it into the Senate. Please keep an open mind about Israel.”
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