FORT WORTH, Texas — A powerful Texas GOP donor hosted white supremacist and neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes and other right-wing activists for several hours on Friday, according to the Texas Tribune.
Jonathan Stickland, the ultraconservative leader of a group that has donated millions of dollars to high-profile Texas politicians, hosted the meeting at his Pale Horse Strategies consulting firm's headquarters in Fort Worth.
Acting on a tip, a Texas Tribune reporter and photographer spotted Fuentes enter the building, along with others, including Kyle Rittenhouse, who was acquitted of homicide after killing two Black Lives Matter protesters in 2020.
Matt Rinaldi, the chair of the Republican Party of Texas and an ally of Stickland was also seen entering the building while Fuentes was inside. When contacted on Sunday, Rinaldi denied that he knew Fuentes was in the building and said he was there to meet Texas GOP Executive Director Jen Hall.
“We were just borrowing a conference room,” Rinaldi told the Texas Tribune.
He said of Fuentes: “I completely condemn that guy and everything he stands for. I would never in a million years meet with that guy.”
Asked if he would condemn Stickland or Pale Horse for hosting Fuentes, Rinaldi responded that he will “disavow Nick Fuentes but I’m not going to make assumptions” based solely on the Tribune’s reporting."
Stickland and Rinaldi are major players in an ongoing civil war with the more moderate, but still deeply conservative, flank of the Texas GOP. Both are former state representatives who have attacked members of their own party, like U.S. Sen. John Cornyn and Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan, as insufficiently conservative.
And both have been bankrolled by a trio of West Texas oil billionaires — Tim Dunn and brothers Farris and Dan Wilks — who have given more than $100 million to a network of campaigns, nonprofits, dark money groups and media companies to push their ultraconservative religious and anti-LGBTQ+ views and oust fellow Republicans from power.
Who is Nick Fuentes?
Fuentes, 25, made headlines last November when he met with former President Donald Trump and Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West -- who caused an uproar with his own anti-Semitic comments -- at Mar-A-Lago.
Numerous Republican leaders condemned Fuentes, including former Vice President Mike Pence, then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and some condemned Trump for dining with him.
The podcaster rose to prominence on YouTube in the wake of 2017’s deadly neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
He has questioned whether the Holocaust happened and said Hitler was “really f---ing cool.” Fuentes has called for a “holy war” against Jews, “Catholic Taliban rule,” and “killing the globalists.” He has celebrated a growing wave of hatred and violence that he hopes will get “uglier and a lot worse” for Jews and others he deems inferior.
Fuentes has also openly fantasized about marrying a 16-year-old because that’s “right when the milk is good.”
"All I want is revenge against my enemies and a total Aryan victory,” Fuentes said last year.
Despite his well-publicized extremism, Fuentes has not been completely cast out of right-wing circles. Hard-right Republicans, including U.S. Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Paul Gosar of Arizona, have spoken at Fuentes’ annual conference alongside avowed white supremacists.
"Mainstream figures’ embrace of Fuentes represents a historical shift in the white supremacist movement, prompting, among other things, widespread media coverage of a prominent white supremacist," the Anti-Defamation League warned. "Fuentes will continue to use this shift to grow his following in extreme circles and, potentially, in the larger conservative movement."
Why Texas?
Fuentes’ visit to Texas comes as the far-right flank of the state GOP continues to elevate extreme figures, rhetoric and conspiracy theories, the Texas Tribune reported. Republicans are also embroiled in infighting in the wake of Attorney General Ken Paxton's impeachment by the Texas House and acquittal by the Texas Senate.
Few figures have been more central to the escalating tension than Stickland and Rinaldi, who have tried to pull the Texas GOP further to the right by labeling fellow conservatives as Republicans in name only — RINOs — and backing boisterous, far-right primary candidates against those who break with their hardline stances.
Hours before the Texas House overwhelmingly voted to impeach Ken Paxton in May, Stickland issued a threat to his fellow Republicans.
A vote to impeach Paxton, Stickland wrote on Twitter, “is a decision to have a primary.”
“Wait till you see my PAC budget,” he later added.
Other Fuentes followers have made their homes in Texas: Earlier this year, Ella Maulding moved from Mississippi to Fort Worth to work as a social media coordinator for Pale Horse Strategies. Maulding has praised Fuentes as “the greatest civil rights leader in history,” and her social media is replete with references to “white genocide," according to the Texas Tribune.
Maulding attended the Friday meeting with Fuentes where she recorded a video for Texans For Strong Borders in which she called on Texas lawmakers to crack down on immigration during the special legislative session.
Texans for Strong Borders wants to stem both legal and illegal immigration. Its founder, Chris Russo, was seen driving Fuentes to the Friday meeting at Pale Horse Strategies.
Russo and Maulding did not respond to requests for comment on Sunday.
