POLITICS
Trump Team Long Knew of Ousted Offi cial’s Bigotry
Merritt Corrigan, active in GOP circles for years, had a well-documented Twitter history
BY MATT TRACY
A homophobic Trump appointee
to the US Agency
for International
Development (USAID)
who served since this past spring
as deputy White House liaison to
the agency has been ousted from
her role over her anti-LGBTQ comments
and other social media
posts.
But her homophobia and transphobia
aren’t new, which presents
important questions: Why was she
hired in the fi rst place? And why
did she stay on board even after
concerns about her fi tness were
raised publicly?
Merritt Corrigan’s name resurfaced
in the media in recent days
after she unlocked her personal
Twitter account and embarked
on a tweetstorm, fi ring out posts
laced with insensitive rhetoric
about LGBTQ people and prompting
USAID’s acting administrator,
John Barsa, to fi nally step in and
pull the plug on her short-lived
tenure with the agency, according
to Politico.
However, Corrigan has been
linked to the Trump team for years
— she was seen serving as some
sort of cashier at the “Trump Store”
at the Conservative Political Action
Conference in February 2018. Despite
previous media reports about
her extensive history of anti-LGBTQ
remarks, she was hired anyway
and her bosses even rushed to
her defense when she was drawing
attention earlier this year.
Corrigan’s wild takes have most
recently included statements like
“gay marriage isn’t marriage,”
“men aren’t women,” and even ones
directly attacking her own favored
administration’s approach to foreign
policy. She also alleges that
her work environment was rife
with an anti-Christian culture.
“The United States is losing
ground in the battle to garner infl
uence through humanitarian
aid because we now refuse to help
countries who don’t celebrate sexual
deviancy,” she said in a tweet on
August 2. “Meanwhile, Russia and
In early 2018, at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Merritt Corrigan may have looked like
any friendly MAGA cashier, but her bigoted, vitriolic Twitter feed told a different story.
China are happy to step in and eat
our lunch.”
In a follow-up tweet, she wrote,
“I watched with horror this week
as USAID distributed taxpayer
funded documents claiming ‘we
cannot tell someone’s sex or gender
by looking at them’ and that
not calling oneself ‘cis-gendered’
is a microagression… I’m not cisanything.
I’m a woman.”
In November of last year, Politico
reported that Corrigan had worked
for the Republican National Committee
before getting hired as a
political liaison at the Hungarian
Embassy. While in the embassy
job, she tweeted that Hungarian
Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a farright
fi gure who has cracked down
on civil liberties in that country, is
“the shining champion of Western
civilization.”
She enjoyed currency in Republican
circles for years despite publishing
Twitter posts saying that
“our homo-empire couldn’t tolerate
even one commercial enterprise
not in full submission to the tyrannical
LGBT agenda.”
Politico also noted last fall that
she once said women today are “far
from the guardianship of a loving
husband.” Following the emergence
of Politico’s reporting, she
made her Twitter account private.
REUTERS/ KEVIN LAMARQUE
As Corrigan’s bombastic reputation
started receiving attention in
the spring, Barsa issued a statement
saying he wanted to “specifi -
cally condemn the unwarranted
and malicious attacks” on Corrigan
and other political appointees,
before adding that “USAID
is honored to have” such offi cials
who “are committed to enacting
the policies of President Donald J.
Trump.”
This defense of Corrigan came
despite her earlier tweet that “Liberal
democracy is little more than
a front for the war being waged
against us by those who fundamentally
despise not only our way
of life, but life itself.” An odd statement,
to say the least, from an appointee
to an agency that applies
a “liberal democracy index” when
evaluating the strength of nations
seeking US aid, ProPublica noted
in a story about her in June.
The pressure against Corrigan
mounted from the time of her appointment.
Late last month, a
group of 20 Democratic members
of Congress sent a letter to Barsa
demanding that she resign immediately,
citing her anti-LGBTQ
stances and her comments rejecting
the “false pretense of women’s
equality with men,” among other
comments.
House Foreign Affairs Committee
Chair Eliot Engel spearheaded
that letter, triggering Corrigan to
begin unleashing wild conspiracy
theories about the lawmaker.
“@RepEliotEngel can hide behind
his mask as he attacks me for
my Christian beliefs, but he can’t
hide from his own well-documented
tragic use of prostitutes,” she
wrote in a tweet about the Jewish
lawmaker from New York.
In a statement confi rming her
departure this month, USAID sidestepped
her anti-LGBTQ remarks
entirely and instead opted to acknowledge
her complaints of an
anti-Christian environment in her
workplace. The agency told Politico
it “takes any claim of discrimination
seriously, and we will investigate
any complaints of anti-Christian
bias Ms. Corrigan has raised
during her tenure at the agency.”
In the wake of her fi ring, Corrigan
continues pushing homophobic
tweets. On the evening of August
3, she retweeted a post by a profi le
dubbed “@NationalFile” that quoted
her as saying, “The Department
of Defense has refused to sell military
requipment — needed in order
to combat ISIS and other extremist
groups — to certain countries in
Africa because they did not have
gay marriage.”
The Human Rights Campaign’s
government affairs director David
Stacey condemned the Trump administration
for appointing individuals
who disregard basic tenets
of human rights.
“Sadly, Merritt Corrigan is not
unique in the Trump Administration,”
Stacey said in a written statement.
“She is the exact type of anti-
LGBTQ zealot that Trump recruits
and places in positions of power.
Corrigan’s biased and harmful
beliefs are not shared by the vast
majority of Americans. Corrigan is
a symptom of a larger problem…
it’s time to hold the Trump-Pence
administration accountable at the
ballot box and elect a leader this
November who supports the fundamental
humanity of LGBTQ
people and appoints people who
share that basic decency.”
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