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NY Times,
Trump Meets With Hard-Right Group Led by Ginni Thomas
By Maggie Haberman and Annie Karni
WASHINGTON — President Trump met last week with a delegation of
hard-right activists led by Ginni Thomas, the wife of Justice Clarence
Thomas, listening quietly as members of the group denounced transgender
people and women serving in the military, according to three people with
direct knowledge of the events.
For 60 minutes Mr. Trump sat, saying little but appearing taken aback,
the three people said, as the group also accused White House aides of
blocking Trump supporters from getting jobs in the administration.
It is unusual for the spouse of a sitting Supreme Court justice to have
such a meeting with a president, and some close to Mr. Trump said it was
inappropriate for Ms. Thomas to have asked to meet with the head of a
different branch of government.
A vocal conservative, Ms. Thomas has long been close to what had been
the Republican Party’s fringes, and extremely outspoken against
Democrats. Her activism has raised concerns of conflicts of interest for
her husband, who is perhaps the most conservative member of the Supreme
Court.
A White House spokeswoman declined to comment on the meeting, and Ms.
Thomas did not respond to an email seeking comment.
During the meeting last Thursday in the Roosevelt Room, which was
attended by about a half-dozen White House aides, one woman argued that
women should not serve in the military because they had less muscle mass
and lung capacity than men did, according to those familiar with the
events. At another point, someone said that gay marriage, which the
Supreme Court determined in 2015 was the law of the land, was harming
the fabric of the United States. And another attendee was dismissive
that sexual assault is pervasive in the military.
The meeting was arranged after months of delay, according to the three
people. It came about after the Thomases had dinner with the president
and the first lady, Melania Trump, the people said.
Ms. Thomas was an ardent supporter of Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of
Texas, during the 2016 presidential primaries. But she shifted her
support to Mr. Trump when he became the nominee and has forcefully
denounced his political critics.
Others at the meeting had also opposed Mr. Trump’s candidacy at one point.
One of them, Connie Hair, was identified by Ms. Thomas’s group as a
conservative columnist when the meeting was being assembled, according
to the people. In reality, she is the chief of staff to Representative
Louie Gohmert, Republican of Texas. During the campaign, she had posted
several comments on Twitter describing Mr. Trump as unfit for office,
including calling him “certifiable” and saying he would “never be
elected president.
In the meeting, Ms. Hair described herself as a strong Trump supporter,
according to those familiar with the events. Ms. Hair did not respond to
an email seeking comment.
A central focus for Ms. Hair and Ms. Thomas was administration
appointments that they wanted made and that they accused the president’s
aides of blocking. People familiar with the situation indicated that the
people Ms. Hair and Ms. Thomas wanted hired were rejected for a range of
reasons, and in at least one case someone was offered a job and declined
it because the position was not considered senior enough. Another
complaint was that Ms. Thomas had not actually shared the full list of
people to be hired, said those familiar with the meeting.
Others attending included Frank Gaffney, the founder of the Center for
Security Policy who has advocated curtailing immigration and has
repeatedly denounced Muslims, and Rosemary Jenks, who works for the
anti-immigration group NumbersUSA, according to the people familiar with
the events.
Ms. Thomas — whose group, Groundswell, was formed in 2013 to strategize
against Democrats and the political left and meets weekly — joined
others in prayer at the start of the meeting. Some members of the group
prayed at different moments as the meeting continued. At one point, Mr.
Trump pulled in his daughter Ivanka, a West Wing adviser, saying she
would be beloved if she were serving a liberal president, instead of
getting negative news coverage.
One attendee criticized Republican congressional leaders, saying they
should be “tarred and feathered,” a person briefed on the meeting said.
Mr. Trump defended the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell of
Kentucky, and the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy of California,
saying that they had held strong for nearly five weeks of a shutdown,
and that it was not clear what else the attendees thought they could be
doing.
Ms. Thomas, who was said to have opened the meeting by informing the
assembled White House staff members that she feared being open because
she did not trust the people there, has long been more conservative than
her husband, and has often provoked controversy.
In 2011 she formed a government affairs firm called Liberty Consulting,
which drew criticism for boasting on its website that Ms. Thomas would
use her “experience and connections” to help clients.
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More recently, she hired as an assistant a woman fired by the
conservative group Turning Point USA for texting a colleague a year
earlier that “I HATE BLACK PEOPLE.” The woman, Crystal Clanton, was on
the list of people Ms. Thomas’s group asked to have attend the meeting,
the people familiar with the sit-down said.
She has also drawn criticism for sharing social media posts promoting
conspiracy theories, including one suggesting that the billionaire
philanthropist George Soros was working against Mr. Trump and that
Democrats had committed voter fraud during last year’s midterm
elections. Shortly before the elections, Ms. Thomas also shared a
misleading post about the caravan of migrants traveling toward the
United States.
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