Rosendale calls neo-Nazi photo op a mistake

U.S. Rep. Matt Rosendale said he unwittingly posed for a photo with high profile members of the neo-Nazi movement last week walking between congressional hearings.

The photo taken March 1 in front of the Capitol shows Rosendale, a two-term lawmaker, posing with Ryan Sanchez, formerly of the white supremacist street-fighting gang RAM, or Rise Above Movement, and Greyson Arnold, a Nazi sympathizer and podcaster present at the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Arnold has called Adolf Hitler a "misunderstood" and “complicated historical figure."

By week's end, the image was being widely circulated on social media, both on Twitter and Mastodon. The post was most often attributed to Vishal P. Singh, publisher of the website "VPS Reports, Civil Rights and Anti-Fascist News."

"I absolutely condemn and have zero tolerance for hate groups, hate speech, and violence. I did not take a meeting with these individuals,” Rosendale said in an email. “I was asked for a photo while walking between hearings, accommodating as I do for all photo requests, and was not aware of the individuals' identity or affiliation with these hate groups that stand in stark contrast to my personal beliefs."

The congressman was outside between hearings, usually held in the same building, because was returning to the House from the joint Veterans Affairs hearing in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, according to his staff.

Independent sources tell Lee Montana Newspapers Rosendale was absent for the first 90 minutes of the joint VA meeting, during which members of the American Legion testified. Veterans present did recall seeing Rosendale during a second 90-minute panel of witnesses.

None of the other committees to which Rosendale is assigned had scheduled meetings that day. 

The Montana Human Rights Network said it's glad that Rosendale, whose comments on immigrants often do offend, denounced the men in the photo as dangerous. The photo took place in the public square, not at a scheduled meeting in the Republican's office, MRHN spokesperson Cherilyn DeVries said. White nationalists do seek such interactions because photos with public figures give them the veneer of credibility.

"MHRN knows that white nationalists frequently lie in order to get more credibility," DeVries said. "The upshot is that we're very glad Rosendale and his staff understand that these people are dangerous and that these aren't people he wants to be associated with. And, he's clearly denounced them. We're grateful people are watching these forums where these photos were being published and held Mr. Rosendale accountable." 

 Sharing the group photo on Instagram, Arnold called Rosendale "a real America First representative with backbone." 

America First at its simplest is an isolationist and non-interventionist policy reflected by Rosendale in his opposition to U.S. military assistance to Ukraine and for the construction of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

However, on the extremes America First has been adopted by a white nationalist movement fueled by xenophobia, antisemitism and persecution of the other. 

White nationalist groups have also protested Juneteenth, a celebration of the emancipation of enslaved African Americans, which Congress voted to make a federal holiday in 2021.

Rosendale, while insisting he wasn't being racist, drew national attention after the June 2021 vote by suggesting the June 19 holiday was part of a decades-long attempt to replace the Fourth of July.

A third point of intersection is the "stop the steal" movement built around Donald Trumps's bogus claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him. White nationalists have rallied around "stop the steal," while praising Republican lawmakers who voted against recognizing the election outcome in key states Trump lost, as Rosendale did.  

This isn't Rosendale's first compromising photo with rightwing extremists. The Eastern Montana representative is trolled constantly on social media with a 2014 photo of Rosendale speaking at an Oath Keepers rally in Kalispell.

Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes, who lives in the Kalispell area, was convicted of seditious conspiracy last November for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol. Later that day, Rosendale and 146 other House Republicans rejected the election results from a handful of states critical to Trump's bogus stolen election narrative.

In 2022 Rosendale was photographed trying on gear at a Montana body armor factory, whose owner argues that America is on the cusp of economic and social collapse and that Montana should secede from the United States.

The men posing in the Capitol photo aren’t low-profile. Arnold was the host of “Pure Politics” a YouTube program that interviewed GOP candidates and officials in the Pacific Northwest during the 2022 election. In April 2021, Arnold toured the U.S.-Mexico border with Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar, a member of the Republican House Freedom Caucus, of which Rosendale participates. Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican and Freedom Caucus member, has also posed for photos with Arnold. Like Rosendale, these are politicians who perpetuate the bogus claim of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election. 

Kari Lake, Arizona's 2022 Republican candidate for governor, posed with Arnold at an "election integrity" event in 2021. Lake has repeatedly and falsely said that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election.

The Seattle Times reports that Washington Republican Party finance reports show Arnold on "payroll" for about $800 compensation. 

In the Rosendale photo, Sanchez, director of the "Nationalist Network" appears to be wearing a World War II-era M36 German officer trench coat. Other Capitol images of Sanchez, Arnold and three other men show them studying a contoured map of the Capitol complex.

On the social media site "Gab," where Sanchez posts under the handle "Culture War Criminal," he posted an image of himself peering over the Capitol complex map with his index finger on the ellipse. He captioned the photo with one word: "schwerpunkt," a phrase coined by military strategist Clause von Clausewitz to indicate "a maximum effort and force at an enemy's weakest spot." 

Sanchez has defended participants in the Jan. 6, 2021, assault of the Capitol, including an appearance on One America News Network before the 2022 election to defend Christian Secor, a UCLA student sentenced to prison for his role in the insurrection. Secor was a follower of the "America First" anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic movement lead by Nick Fuentes, a white supremacist and holocaust denier.

The Conservative Political Action Coalition, better known as CPAC, was in Washington, D.C., last week, headlined by former president Donald Trump, who declared himself the "retribution" of conservatives feeling victimized by society. Sanchez is quoted in a Washington Examiner article about the event.

Online, Sanchez said the real conservative event was a rally the men attended, which was organized by Fuentes, host of the America First Show and creator of the America First Foundation.