Rep. Elise Stefanik, MAGA Republican from New York’s 21st congressional district, has been nominated to be the next U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations by Donald Trump. Stefanik’s rise in the Republican Party is attributed to her sharp turn from so-called “moderate” to the far-right, embracing white nationalist extremism and conspiracy theories to rise within her party’s ranks to become the third-ranking GOP House leader in 2022. Since then she has tirelessly and deliberately chosen to side with the conspiratorial fringe and drive her party down the far-right rabbit hole.
KEY POINTS:
- While Stefanik positioned herself as a moderate early in her political career, including opposing early Trump proposals, she eventually embraced the Big Lie to rise to the ranks of House leadership and now UN nominee
- Stefanik was unrepentant after a racist mass shooter in her state used the same deadly white nationalist rhetoric that she had embraced in advertising, official House speeches, and media interviews
- Stefanik has fully endorsed Trump’s “bloody” and destructive mass deportation agenda, as well as making false claims about “open borders” and that the prior administration intentionally let in dangerous people. Meanwhile, Stefanik has been silent on Trump releasing 1,500 insurrectionists, including cop-beaters, back into our communities
STEFANIK BEFORE TRUMP
Before becoming the youngest woman elected to the House of Representatives in 2014, Stefanik had spent several years working for a not-so-distant past of “traditional” Republicans, including as a senior aide for George W. Bush’s Chief of Staff, and as a top campaign advisor for 2012 Vice Presidential nominee Paul Ryan. Following Mitt Romney’s loss, Stefanik looked for a higher position, running in a Democratic-controlled seat, flipping it by a 20-point margin after positioning herself as a moderate. When Trump first emerged as the GOP’s nominee for President in 2016, Stefanik largely ignored him, saying he “would not become the GOP nominee for president,” and that his campaign had already peaked.
In fact, before Trump was first elected to office, she sounded an awful lot like a Never Trumper. When Trump downplayed Russia’s election interference in the 2016 election, Stefanik disagreed, saying that “This was much, much more than that, much more systemic, much more targeted, with very sophisticated hacking efforts, disinformation efforts targeted to specific campaigns,” and added that there is a “need to work with the administration and push the administration to take the threat from Russia very seriously.” Dubbed the “future of the Republican Party” by her then-boss, Speaker Paul Ryan, Stefanik was also asked to help recruit and elect other women candidates for the GOP. But while she criticized Trump’s misogynistic comments and bragging about committing sexual assault in the infamous Access Hollywood tape, describing those as “inappropriate, offensive” and “just wrong,” she did not rescind her endorsement after having previously stated that she would endorse her party’s eventual nominee. It was one of the first major indications that her de-evolution had begun.
STEFANIK DURING TRUMP’S FIRST TERM
Following Trump’s first election, Stefanik did manage some semblance of an “independent voice” and even opposed the Trump administration’s border wall as “unrealistic”. She was also quoted as opposing Trump’s Muslim ban, saying “This is not who we are as a country… This is not according to our constitutional principle.” But despite her public criticisms of Trump, her descent was already in progress. When Stefanik falsely asserted that Democrats in Trump’s impeachment hearings weren’t allowed to question the witness, her defense for Trump was duly noted. At a press conference, she asserted that “Nothing rises to the level of impeachable offenses” even though the impeachment inquiry would reveal at least three instances of quid pro quo between his first administration and Ukraine’s government.
Her defense got her praise from Trump, who labeled her a “new Republican star” in a social media post. Likely recognizing the political dividends – “Stefanik’s strong Trump backing is likely a strategic play for her reelection campaign in 2020: While New York’s 21st district previously voted for former President Barack Obama, it’s since seen a major swing in favor of the GOP and Trump in recent years,” Vox reported at the time – Stefanik fully leaned into Trump’s election denialism by embracing the Big Lie. Her next move was to catapult herself into the third-ranking House GOP position by successfully challenging and ousting House Republican Conference Chair Liz Cheney, who had refused to follow Trump’s footsteps and submit to the Big Lie and the failed coup attempt on January 6th.
Rep. Cheney wrote in her op-ed at the Washington Post that her removal was “a turning point,” and that “Republicans must decide whether we are going to choose truth and fidelity to the Constitution.” While Stefanik had rejected Trump’s denial about Russian election interference just a couple years earlier, the turning point for her had already been crossed. She was fully onboard.
STEFANIK’S EMBRACE OF WHITE NATIONALIST RHETORIC
Now at the helm of GOP House leadership, Stefanik fully immersed herself with white nationalist extremist rhetoric, including the great replacement and deadly invasion conspiracy theories. She was a crucial stepping stone for MAGA’s ability to fully take control of the Republican Party. Up until a few years ago, only the most extreme members of Congress, like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, were using the great replacement conspiracy theory and lying about an “invasion” at the southern border. But now, Stefanik and the fringe are the new GOP mainstream.
Notably, white nationalist “invasion” and “replacement” rhetoric was echoed in Facebook ads purchased by Stefanik. These ads, which garnered more than half a million views, espoused the same language and ideas as the ones found in manifestos of multiple domestic terrorist attacks in recent years – including in her own state. The fact that one of the leaders of the GOP embraced this type of dangerous rhetoric signaled a huge shift within the party and that Greene’s far-right extremism was no longer on the edges. Despite pushback, Stefanik continued down this path of echoing white nationalist extremism, and added “invasion” to her vocabulary, from House floor speeches to TV interviews to campaign ads.
But when this same rhetoric was used by a racist domestic terrorist in her home state in 2022, resulting in the deaths of ten Black Americans who were simply going about their day, Stefanik appeared to be more outraged over being publicly called out than over the fact that she was amplifying the same racist conspiracy theory that motivated the mass shooter.
Stefanik also co-sponsored H.Res.50 in both the 117th and 118th Congress, which called for “Recognizing that Article I, Section 10 of the United States Constitution explicitly reserves to the States the sovereign power to repel an invasion and defend their citizenry from the overwhelming and ‘imminent danger.’” Using “invasion” rhetoric legitimizes fear and seeks to further mainstream the idea of the great replacement conspiracy theory. And while Stefanik condemned the horrific weekend in August 2017 when tiki torch-wielding neo-Nazis marched through the streets of Charlottesville and later murdered counter-protester Heather Heyer, she remained silent when Trump minimized the deadly rally as “a little peanut.”
STEFANIK ENDORSES ‘BLOODY’ MASS DEPORTATION
Of course, Stefanik hasn’t been alone: America’s Voice identified 175 Republican members of Congress who followed suit and embraced the great replacement conspiracy theory. By increasingly mainstreaming this dangerous rhetoric, Republicans set up their embrace of Trump’s second Presidential campaign slogan: mass deportation now. By falsely describing America as under “invasion,” it made enough room to dehumanize immigrants as “animals” and “criminals” in order to justify mass family separation and mass detention camps. Reports indicate that some of the migrants recently sent to the notorious Guantánamo Bay camp in Cuba do not even have a criminal record.
Stefanik has been instrumental in this, by helping lay the mass deportation groundwork as a party leader. In a short couple of years, the supposed moderate Stefanik who criticized Trump for his Muslim ban and pushed back on his offensive rhetoric is no more. She has continued to support Trump in his endeavors to villainize immigrants, even when he’s repeated the offensive rhetoric of Adolf Hitler by claiming that immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of the US. And she has been all-in on mass deportation. As early as July 2024, she campaigned on promising that Republicans will be “enacting the largest deportation operation in our nation’s history,” copying Trump’s campaign pledge. On her official congressional Facebook account, she uplifted a report from right-wing media outlet NY Post on Speaker Mike Johnson’s comments that “4.5 million migrants will be ‘first priority’ for mass deportation.” She praised Johnson’s mass deportation priorities, mimicking Trump’s hateful and false rhetoric by claiming that “Far Left Open Border Czar Kamala Harris has allowed murderers, rapists, and convicts to pour into our country via our Northern and Southern Borders.”
Meanwhile, Stefanik has remained silent as Trump has released 1,500 Jan. 6 insurrectionists, including rioters who beat law enforcement officers, back into our communities.
It’s likely that Stefanik will be confirmed as the UN ambassador due to the fact that she’s a sitting member of Congress and appears to be less extreme than other nominees. But a closer look at her record only shows that she was a key Republican player in helping change the GOP into a white nationalist extremist party.