Michael Anton Explained

Michael Anton
Office:Deputy Assistant to the President for Strategic Communications
President:Donald Trump
Term Start:February 8, 2017
Term End:April 8, 2018
Predecessor:Ben Rhodes
Successor:Garrett Marquis
Sarah Tinsley[1] [2]
Party:Republican
Education:University of California, Davis (BA)
St. John's College, Annapolis (MALA)
Claremont Graduate University (MA)

Michael Anton (born 1969) is an American conservative essayist, speechwriter and former private-equity executive who was a senior national security official in the Trump administration. Under a pseudonym he wrote "The Flight 93 Election", an influential essay in support of Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign.[3]

Anton was Deputy Assistant to the President for Strategic Communications on the National Security Council under Trump.[4] He is a former speechwriter for Rupert Murdoch, Rudy Giuliani, and Condoleezza Rice, and worked as director of communications at the investment bank Citigroup and as managing director of investing firm BlackRock.[5]

Early life and education

Anton is of Italian and Lebanese descent. He grew up in Loomis, California, an exurb of Sacramento. He received his bachelor's degree from the University of California, Davis [6] and earned advanced degrees from St. John's College and the Claremont Graduate University.[7] [8]

Career

Anton joined the U.S. National Security Council as Deputy Assistant to the President for Strategic Communications in February 2017. He resigned on April 8, 2018, the evening before John R. Bolton became Trump's National Security Advisor.[9] [10] [11] [12] [13]

Anton joined Hillsdale College's Kirby Center Graduate School of Government in Washington, D.C., after leaving the Trump administration.[14]

In December 2020, Trump appointed Anton to a four-year term on the National Board for Education Sciences, which advises the Department of Education on scientific research and investments.[15] [16]

Views

Anton is considered to be a notable West Coast Straussian, as a student of Leo Strauss by way of tutor Harry V. Jaffa,[17] and he specializes in the study of Niccolò Machiavelli.[18]

Anton has derided American diversity in his writing, arguing in a pseudonymous March 2016 essay that "'Diversity' is not 'our strength'; it's a source of weakness, tension and disunion." In the same essay, written under the pseudonym Publius Decius Mus (after the ancient Roman consul), Anton defended Donald Trump's use of the slogan "America First" by arguing that the America First Committee (which included prominent antisemites and opposed the United States entering World War II) had been "unfairly maligned."[19] He also argued that Islam "is a militant faith", and that "only an insane society" would take in Muslim immigrants after the 9/11 attacks.[20]

His pseudonymous September 2016 editorial "The Flight 93 Election", published in the Claremont Review of Books, compared the prospect of conservatives letting Hillary Clinton win the 2016 United States presidential election with passengers not charging the cockpit of the United Airlines aircraft hijacked by Al-Qaeda in the 9/11 attacks.[21] [22] [23] [24] [25] In the essay, Anton criticized conservatives who were skeptical of Donald Trump,[26] and he also decried the "ceaseless importation of Third World foreigners," called for "no more importing poverty, crime, and alien cultures", called the idea of Islamophobia and the Black Lives Matter movement "inanities", and argued that the American left was waging "wars on 'cis-genderism'".[27] Rush Limbaugh devoted the bulk of a radio show in September 2016 to a reading of the editorial.[28]

In Anton's 2019 book After the Flight 93 Election: The Vote that Saved America and What We Still Have to Lose, he argued that Trump constituted "the first serious national-political defense of the Constitution in a generation." Trump praised the book.

According to Carlos Lozada, book critic for The Washington Post, Anton's book primarily reprints text from his 2016 editorial, but with a newly added rumination of how dangerous the American left is. Lozada wrote, "Anton spends virtually no time detailing or defending particular policies of the Trump administration; all that matters is the enemy. For Anton, Hillary Clinton is no longer the chief nemesis—the entire left is, along with sellout conservatives and any other forces countering the president. They contribute to a 'spiritual sickness' and 'existential despair' pervading not just the United States but all the West ... Apparently, Flight 93 did not end with the 2016 vote; we are forever on the plane, endlessly in danger, no matter who has seized the controls."

Anton is known as a critic of birthright citizenship in the United States, arguing that the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution does not mandate jus soli ("right of the soil") citizenship, and that the Amendment's use of the provision "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" excludes children born of illegal aliens.[29] An analysis of Anton's arguments by Neil Goldfarb in Language Log said they are predicated on a quotation from Senator Jacob Howard whose meaning Anton inverted by adding the word "or".[30]

In September 2020, Anton wrote a conspiratorial essay titled "The Coming Coup?" in The American Mind; in the essay, Anton suggested that Democrats, aided by George Soros, were planning a coup d'etat to take over the United States[19] [31] by way of a domestic color revolution coordinated by the so-called Deep State and influential operatives of the Democratic Party.[32] The widely shared article was called a tipping point in spreading the unfounded claim, which was further popularized by The Federalist, DJHJ Media and Dan Bongino.

Personal life

Anton is a classically trained chef. After resigning from the National Security Council in 2018, he came back to the White House for a day to work as a line cook in the kitchen, helping prepare a state dinner for President Emmanuel Macron of France.[33] He is also an aesthete with a penchant for tailoring and classic menswear, having authored a short book and over 40,000 posts on internet bulletin board Styleforum.net on the subject.[34] [35]

Under the pseudonym "Nicholas Antongiavanni", Anton wrote The Suit, a 2006 men's fashion guide book, which is a parody of Niccolò Machiavelli's The Prince.[36]

Books

External links

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Vogel. Kenneth P.. May 21, 2018. Meet the Members of the 'Shadow N.S.C.' Advising John Bolton. The New York Times. March 10, 2019. September 11, 2021. https://web.archive.org/web/20210911053430/https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/21/us/politics/advising-bolton-a-shadow-nsc-of-cronies.html. live.
  2. Web site: Collins. Kaitlan. May 29, 2018. Bolton adds two loyalists to the National Security Council. CNN. March 10, 2019. November 7, 2021. https://web.archive.org/web/20211107030921/https://www-m.cnn.com/2018/05/29/politics/john-bolton-hires-new-communication/index.html. live.
  3. Nguyen. Tina. February 23, 2017. Machiavelli in the White House: Is This the Most Powerful Man in Trump's Administration?. Vanity Fair. June 10, 2021. November 11, 2020. https://web.archive.org/web/20201111174142/http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/02/michael-anton-white-house-machiavelli. live.
  4. Web site: Michael Anton C-SPAN.org. C-SPAN. 2021-02-24. March 3, 2021. https://web.archive.org/web/20210303190908/https://www.c-span.org/person/?michaelanton. live.
  5. Web site: Johnson. Eliana. Stokols. Eli. February 7, 2017. What Steve Bannon Wants You to Read. Politico. February 9, 2017. April 23, 2017. https://web.archive.org/web/20170423082314/http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/02/steve-bannon-books-reading-list-214745. live.
  6. Web site: Michael Anton After the Flight 93 Election . 2024-04-25 . dc.hillsdale.edu . en-US.
  7. Machiavelli in the White House: Is This the Most Powerful Man in Trump's Administration?. Tina. Nguyen. Vanity Fair. February 23, 2017 . October 28, 2020. November 11, 2020. https://web.archive.org/web/20201111174142/http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/02/michael-anton-white-house-machiavelli. live.
  8. Web site: Maas. Peter. February 12, 2017. Dark Essays by White House Staffer Are the Intellectual Source Code of Trumpism. https://web.archive.org/web/20170307052317/https://theintercept.com/2017/02/12/dark-essays-by-white-house-staffer-are-the-intellectual-source-code-of-trumpism/. March 7, 2017. The Intercept. March 7, 2017. In the beginning, Anton attended Claremont Graduate University, an incubator for conservative thinkers. He became a speechwriter and press secretary for New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, then took a mid-level job at the NSC in the George W. Bush administration. As the Weekly Standard reported, he was part of the team that pushed for the disastrous invasion of Iraq. Anton left the government in 2005 and became a speechwriter for Rupert Murdoch at News Corp., followed by several years in the communications shop at Citigroup, then a year and a half as a managing director at BlackRock, the asset management firm..
  9. Web site: Anton. Michael. April 20, 2019. The Trump Doctrine. Foreign Policy. en-US. February 24, 2021. November 7, 2021. https://web.archive.org/web/20211107031717/https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/04/20/the-trump-doctrine-big-think-america-first-nationalism/. live.
  10. News: Landler. Mark. April 25, 2018. A National Security Aide's Departing Wish: Cooking for the State Dinner. The New York Times. 0362-4331. en-US. February 24, 2021. June 4, 2021. https://web.archive.org/web/20210604001510/https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/24/us/politics/michael-anton-white-house-state-dinner.html. live.
  11. News: Cerbin. Carolyn. April 8, 2018. National Security Council spokesman Michael Anton to leave White House. USA Today. en-US. April 9, 2018. June 12, 2020. https://web.archive.org/web/20200612173640/https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2018/04/08/national-security-council-spokesman-michael-anton-leave-white-house/497935002/. live.
  12. News: Borger. Julian. April 9, 2018. Syria provides John Bolton with first test as Trump's national security adviser. The Guardian. April 9, 2018. May 12, 2021. https://web.archive.org/web/20210512191003/https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/apr/09/syria-john-bolton-assad-chemical-attack-test. live.
  13. News: Dawsey. Josh. Jaffe. Greg. April 10, 2018. White House homeland security adviser Tom Bossert resigns. The Washington Post. April 10, 2018. July 30, 2021. https://web.archive.org/web/20210730191519/https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/white-house-homeland-security-adviser-resigns-amid-continued-turnover-in-trump-administration/2018/04/10/15db518a-3ccb-11e8-a7d1-e4efec6389f0_story.html. live.
  14. Web site: Michael Anton. 2021-07-04. dc.hillsdale.edu. en-US. November 6, 2021. https://web.archive.org/web/20211106214138/https://dc.hillsdale.edu/Profiles/Michael-Anton/. live.
  15. News: Sparks. Sarah D.. December 14, 2020. Researchers Balk at Trump's Last-Minute Picks for Ed. Science Board. Education Week. en. December 18, 2020. January 26, 2021. https://web.archive.org/web/20210126024816/https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/researchers-balk-at-trumps-last-minute-picks-for-ed-science-board/2020/12. live.
  16. Web site: Mervis. Jeffrey. December 11, 2020. Researchers decry Trump picks for education sciences advisory board. Science AAAS. en. December 18, 2020. September 30, 2021. https://web.archive.org/web/20210930070834/https://www.science.org/content/article/researchers-decry-trump-picks-education-sciences-advisory-board. live.
  17. Web site: MacDougald. Park. 2020-02-05. The Battle on the New Right for the Soul of Trump's America. 2021-07-03. Tablet Magazine. en. October 21, 2021. https://web.archive.org/web/20211021015102/https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/the-new-millennial-american-right. live.
  18. Web site: Patterson. Troy. February 28, 2017. Trump Official Once Wrote Book About Suits in the Voice of Machiavelli. 2021-07-23. www.bloomberg.com. April 20, 2019. https://web.archive.org/web/20190420213044/https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-28/reading-michael-anton-s-book-the-suit-written-in-machiavelli-s-voice. live.
  19. Web site: Boigon. Molly. September 18, 2020. A former Trump official dreamed up a George Soros-funded 'coup' and QAnon believes it. The Forward. en-US. September 22, 2020. November 1, 2021. https://web.archive.org/web/20211101014731/https://forward.com/news/454739/conspiracy-theorists-george-soros-coming-coup-qanon/. live.
  20. .
  21. Web site: Chait. Jonathan. February 2, 2017. America's Leading Authoritarian Is Working for Trump. New York Magazine. June 10, 2021. October 7, 2018. https://web.archive.org/web/20181007075359/http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/02/americas-leading-authoritarian-intellectual-works-for-trump.html. live.
  22. Web site: Celeste. Katz. February 3, 2017. Bannon isn't the only shadowy far-right figure in the White House - meet Michael Anton. Mic. June 10, 2021. August 11, 2021. https://web.archive.org/web/20210811011307/https://www.mic.com/articles/167607/michael-anton-donald-trump#.u6iDn3OD3. live.
  23. Web site: Leonhardt. David. February 3, 2017. The Unmasking of a Trumpist. The New York Times. June 10, 2021. October 1, 2020. https://web.archive.org/web/20201001084518/https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/03/opinion/the-unmasking-of-a-trumpist.html. live.
  24. Web site: Cooper. Ryan. February 3, 2017. Republicans: You must impeach President Trump. The Week. June 10, 2021. January 28, 2021. https://web.archive.org/web/20210128201435/https://theweek.com/articles/677609/republicans-must-impeach-president-trump. live.
  25. Web site: Gray. Rosie. February 10, 2017. The Anti-Democracy Movement Influencing the Right. The Atlantic. June 10, 2021. January 10, 2020. https://web.archive.org/web/20200110153830/https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/02/behind-the-internets-dark-anti-democracy-movement/516243/. live.
  26. News: Lozada. Carlos. March 15, 2019. Thinking for Trump: Other presidents had a brain trust. But the intellectuals backing this White House are a bust.. The Washington Post. June 10, 2021. December 18, 2020. https://web.archive.org/web/20201218020313/https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/book-party/wp/2019/03/15/feature/other-presidents-had-a-brain-trust-but-the-intellectuals-backing-this-white-house-are-a-bust/. live.
  27. Anton. Michael. September 5, 2016. The Flight 93 Election. Claremont Review of Books. Upland, California, US. Claremont Institute. February 23, 2021. November 7, 2021. https://web.archive.org/web/20211107005414/https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/digital/the-flight-93-election/. live.
  28. Web site: Linker. Damon. February 19, 2021. The chilling tributes to Rush Limbaugh. The Week. en. March 1, 2021. November 6, 2021. https://web.archive.org/web/20211106215600/https://theweek.com/articles/967577/chilling-tributes-rush-limbaugh. live.
  29. Web site: Anton. Michael. July 22, 2018. Birthright Citizenship: A Response to My Critics. Claremont Review of Books. Claremont Institute. October 30, 2018. November 12, 2019. https://web.archive.org/web/20191112185040/http://www.claremont.org/crb/basicpage/birthright-citizenship-a-response-to-my-critics/. live.
  30. https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=39284 Citizenship and syntax (updated, and updated again)
  31. Web site: Alba. Davey. Davey Alba. October 13, 2020. Riled Up: Misinformation Stokes Calls for Violence on Election Day. The New York Times. June 10, 2021. November 6, 2021. https://web.archive.org/web/20211106091713/https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/13/technology/viral-misinformation-violence-election.html. live.
  32. Web site: Anton. Michael. The Coming Coup?. 2021-07-03. The American Mind. en-US. November 7, 2021. https://web.archive.org/web/20211107005414/https://americanmind.org/salvo/the-coming-coup/. live.
  33. News: Landler. Mark. April 25, 2018. A National Security Aide's Departing Wish: Cooking for the State Dinner. The New York Times. 0362-4331. en-US. December 22, 2020. June 4, 2021. https://web.archive.org/web/20210604001510/https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/24/us/politics/michael-anton-white-house-state-dinner.html. live.
  34. Web site: Maass. Peter. February 16, 2017. Trump Official Obsessed Over Nuclear Apocalypse, Men's Style, Fine Wines in 40,000 Posts on Fashion Site. 2021-07-03. The Intercept. en. July 11, 2021. https://web.archive.org/web/20210711221556/https://theintercept.com/2017/02/16/trump-official-obsessed-over-nuclear-apocalypse-mens-style-fine-wines-in-40000-posts-on-fashion-site/. live.
  35. Web site: Backman. Melvin. 2018-03-22. How a Menswear Troll Became a Trump Administration Insider. 2021-07-03. Garage. en. December 7, 2020. https://web.archive.org/web/20201207003601/https://garage.vice.com/en_us/article/7xdv9x/michael-anton-styleforum. live.
  36. Web site: The Dandy. Humanities: The Magazine for the National Endowment for the Humanities. March–April 2008. May 19, 2017. May 14, 2017. https://web.archive.org/web/20170514202059/https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2008/marchapril/feature/the-dandy. live.

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