Newsweek Mum on Status of Pedro L. Gonzalez, Contributor and DeSantis Booster Who Sent Racist Messages

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Newsweek declines to say whether it plans to continue publishing columns from a conservative influencer who admits to making racist and anti-Semitic comments in group chat messages with Trump supporters.

A spokesperson for the magazine told The Daily Beast on Thursday that Pedro L. Gonzalez, who wrote 19 articles, most recently this month, was a freelancer and not an employee. The spokesperson could not say if he was being paid for his work and declined to say whether Newsweek would continue to accept offers from him.

Gonzalez did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Earlier this week, far-right outlet Breitbart ran a story that revealed vile messages Gonzalez wrote in a group chat titled Right-Wing Death Squad before he went from a Trump backer to a prominent Trump supporter. Ron DeSantis.

Messages reported by Breitbart, sent between 2019 and 2020, included racist allusions to black and Jewish people calling the Daily Wires Candace Owens and Ben Shapiro the negress and the Jew and calling most Jews problematic and both praising white nationalism and white supremacist Nick Fuentes.

Fuentes is the future, he wrote in a message. In another, he praised Fuentes’ group of white nationalists, the Groypers: I take up arms with the Groypers.

Gonzalez, who is also the political editor of the conservative Chronicles magazine, complained in a tweet Tuesday that the leaked posts were a smear of the Trump campaign intended to diminish DeSantis.

The only reason my private messages I exchanged with *Trump supporters* from a different, dumb season of my life is being used against me is because I’ve become Trump’s most effective critic since I jumped off the Trump bandwagon, he wrote.

He added in a lengthy tweet on Thursday that he had changed since he wrote the posts, but still portrayed himself as the victim of a smear campaign.

My views and attitude changed quickly and drastically in a short time, but I’ve always been very stubborn, and I don’t generally respond well to anyone trying to shut me up, certainly not by people who are guilty of far worse than me and feels no remorse, he writes. When Trump is gone, they will have nowhere to go and will end up like Crassus, into whose mouth the Parthians poured molten gold mocking his pride and greed.

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