Trump’s Newest Poster Boy Is Avowed Racist And Anti-Semite
Donald trump’s love affair with anti-Semites and white supremacists was first showcased when he refused to condemn the neo-Nazis who lead the deadly, “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va., in August 2017.
He has consistently complimented white supremacists and candidates with racist and anti-Semitic views. Trump’s current posterboy is Timothy Hale-Cusanelli, a virulent anti-Semite, Nazi sympathizer and white supremacist, who was featured at trump’s campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday. Hale-Cusanelli’s aunt, Cynthia Hughes, spoke at the rally about how unfairly she claims her nephew has been treated since his arrest and ultimate conviction on charges related to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection by trump supporters.
Hale-Cusanelli was convicted on May 27 on all five charges he faced after claiming that he didn’t know Congress met at the Capitol. He will be sentenced next month when he faces up to 20 years behind bars for the felony of obstructing an official proceeding.
A former Army reservist and security guard at a Naval weapons station, Hale-Cusanelli has since been dishonorably discharged.
A March 21 government filing to deny bail to Hale-Cusanelli sheds considerable light on his ideology and history of racist, anti-Semitic actions. He got national attention after a photograph was made public with Hale-Cusanelli proudly showing that he had shaved his facial hair into a Hitler mustache. The photo of Hale-Cusanelli on duty on April 26, 2020, was distributed to his fellow sailors who were serving at the National Weapons Station Earle in Monmouth County.
The filing said that Hale-Cusanelli’s affinity for Hitler and the Nazi party went far beyond facial hair, however, as shown by other blatantly offensive and violent images recovered from his cell phone.
They included a photograph of a takeoff on the film, “Jaws,” with a shark with the appearance of Hitler and below it the words, “It’s OK to care about the 50 million whites who died in WW2 instead of the 250,000 dead communist Jews who started it.”
Another poster found on Hale-Cusanelli’s phone includes the words, “Who is behind the push for mass immigration from the third world into western countries?” It is above a poster with photos and names of 30 prominent Jewish people, and below is the comment, “PURE COINCIDENCE,” in letters to simulate Hebrew writing. Another image is a cartoon depicting the Nazi Party as the savior of white Americans from the Republic and Democratic parties.
“Neither is defendant’s ideology strictly limited to Nazi sympathy or a hatred of Jewish people,” the filing noted.
It referred to another Aug. 16, 2019, photograph digitally extracted from Hale-Cusanelli’s cell phone, that show shim displaying the “OK” hand gesture, commonly utilized by White Supremacists to indicate “White Power.” Also included is a screenshot from video that shows Hale-Cusanelli in a bathroom mirror on Jan. 16, 2020, stating “that’s right, you little bitch, I work out like I hate immigrants . . . intensely!”
Other images extracted from the phone included one with a photo of “Koko the Gorilla” alongside a photo of two “sub-Saharan African” children. The photo has the title, “The main difference between Koko the Gorilla and Sub Saharan Africans.”
Below the gorilla, it reads, “has an IQ of 83, has never harmed other animals, is a critically endangered species, is independent and can survive on its own.”
The caption under the children’s photo reads, “Average IQ is 68, technically mentally retarded. Known to frequently attack other sub-Saharan Africans, gorillas and humans, often for food. Depends on handouts from first world countries for survival.”
There also was a photo with an image of the Joker from the Batman film, proclaiming “Yesterday I failed my biology exam. The question was: Name something commonly found in cells…apparently niggers wasn’t the right answer.”
In January 2020, Hale-Cusanelli placed a video on the “Based Hermes Show,” a YouTube show that claims to present issues of local New Jersey politics. Hale-Cusanelli later deleted the video recordings from YouTube but a clip of his show was digitally extracted and shows a portion of a conversation about a politician’s call for gun control.
“We need more gun control? Really?,” Hale-Cusanelli says. “Maybe we need more minority control. But you don’t want to say that, because you don’t want to lose votes,” indicating that if there were fewer minorities, there would be fewer gun crimes.
The following day, he filmed a “teaser” for the show, in which he notes, “Hey guys, did you know the Jews did 9/11? Of course you did…”
The filing claims that Hale-Cussanelli’s statements “make it clear that his ideology is the driving force behind his stated desire for a Civil War. Given that defendant’s desire for a civil war makes him a danger to the community, this court can and must consider defendant’s ideology within the context of his dangerousness.”
Hale-Cussanelli reportedly said that it was “only a matter of time” before a civil war broke out “along partisan lines,” but that “they” (Democrats) don’t want to fire the first shot because all of the guns and resources are in Republican hands, and Republicans make up 70 percent of the military.”
In the event of civil war, “it’s not going to be New York and California winning the day, it’s going to be the good old boys from the Midwest, Texas, and Arkansas.”
Hale-Cussanelli said that if he was President he would purge both houses of Congress and give “some groups” 24 hours to leave the country. He would then set up regional governments, like “old Empires did.”
Hale-Cussanelli asked to be released pending trial and his filing named two individuals, identified as J.H. and C.H., as potential third-party custodians who would ensure his compliance with the conditional release conditions. One of the individuals was arrested with Hale-Cussanelli on Aug. 4, 2010, during an incident in which they fired at a home a “potato gun” emblazoned with the words “WHITE IS RIGHT” and the Confederate Flag.
The digital extraction of Hale-Cussanelli’s cell phone produced 423 pages of text messages between him and J.H. “which are replete the same ideology outlined above.”
The filing said that Hale-Cussanelli’s white supremacist and Nazi sympathizer ideology “appears to be the driving force in his life. So much so that (he) believes that a Civil War is ‘only a matter of time.’ This Civil War is something that (he) ‘really wishes’ would happen because it is the ‘simplest solution’ and the ‘best shot’ to obtain ‘a clean bill of health, as a society.’”
“Lest there be any question about what defendant means by a ‘clean bill of health, as a society,’ defendant stated ‘I don’t think we can fix the problems that Jews cause if you don’t address all the things they do.’”
Government investigators also interviewed more than a dozen fellow Navy Seamen, including one who recalled Hale-Cussanelli saying, “babies born with any deformities or disabilities should be shot in the forehead.”
“That Seaman also recalled Defendant saying that if he was a Nazi ‘he would kill all the Jews and eat them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and he wouldn’t need to season them because the salt from their tears would make it flavorful enough,’” the filing said.
A Navy Petty Officer said Hale-Cussanelli talked constantly about Jewish people and remembered him saying “Hitler should have finished the job.” Yet another Navy Petty Officer said Hale-Cussanelli was a White Supremacist who said that “Jews, women, and blacks were on the bottom of the totem pole.”
A naval base contractor who met Hale-Cussanelli said that he could tell that he was a white supremacist “from day one,” and that Hale-Cussanelli said he “did not like the Jews because they caused all of the world’s problems.”
At the recent rally, with trump by her side, Hughes told the crowd that her nephew had been kept in jail since his arrest nearly two years ago as an example of what she called the “broader injustice facing defendants in January 6-related cases.” A judge had ruled that Hale-Cusanelli should remain in jail pending trial because he posed a threat to the public and that there was a potential for an “escalation of violence” from his neo-Nazi beliefs.
Hughes is founder and president of the Patriot Freedom Project, a group that supports those arrested for rioting at the Capitol.