"I could have used a tad bit more of a fascist Trump”

As the Trump campaign’s new senior adviser for strategy, Cortes has been tasked with helping right the ship of President Donald Trump’s re-election efforts after months of strategic and tactical blunders under newly demoted campaign manager Brad Parscale. Cortes is a familiar presence to television viewers for his appearances on cable programs, but he also hosts a radio show, The Steve Cortes Show. With that platform, he has advocated for an even more authoritarian version of the current president.

“If Trump were the fascist that they pretend that he is, wouldn’t he have cracked down much, much harder on the unrest in the American streets?” Cortes said on The Steve Cortes Show on June 25, less than three weeks after the incident at Lafayette Square. “To be quite honest, you know, when there were people being bloodied, cops being attacked, businesses being smashed, I could have used a tad bit more of a fascist Trump.”…

Among Cortes’ most recent statements: declaring that billionaire philanthropist and conservative bête noire George Soros is manipulating the Black Lives Matter movement to achieve the “nullification of America;” saying that the “propensity of Black people in this country to commit violent crime” meant that white criminals are actually the victims of police violence; and dismissing concerns about schoolchildren spreading the novel coronavirus to elderly relatives by saying that “grandma can stay somewhere else.”