President Trump’s nominee to head the Office of Personnel and Management says he will not apologize for provocative and conspiratorial tweets that he posted as a conservative commentator.
The White House says John Gibbs has its full support for the job. However, the resurfacing of old comments — describing the Democratic Party as the party of Islam and “gender-bending,” expressing support for an “alt-right” agitator banned by Twitter, and linking Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager to satanic rituals — will make for a turbulent confirmation process.
In an exclusive interview with the Washington Examiner, Gibbs said he would not be backing down. His comments, he said, had been taken out of context by enemies.
“When I look back at this, I don’t really see anything to apologize for,” he said. “I was a commentator at the time, I was commentating on popular issues at the time.”
Much of the criticism, he added, was motivated by racism on the Left and the mistaken belief that an African American could not be a conservative.
“For them to see a black conservative in a prominent position is a threat to their narrative that Republicans are racist and they all hate black people,” he said.
Gibbs, 41, works at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, where he is acting assistant secretary for community planning and development, managing an $8 billion budget and overseeing a staff of 700.
His Twitter feed is now private. But the old tweets were republished by CNN after he was nominated to become the permanent director of the OPM, the human resources wing of the federal government.
They show how in 2016 he stoked a conspiracy theory that claimed John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign manager, drank bodily fluids at a Satanic dinner. The claims emerged when Podesta’s leaked emails revealed a message from artist Marina Abramovic about “spirit cooking” — a book and performance in which she wrote recipes in blood.
“True, true, and true. #Trump #SpiritCooking #BlackLivesMatter,” he wrote as he retweeted a message posted by Wayne DuPree saying Clinton was losing black support as a result of the Abramovic email. Dupree is a radio host who claimed that actors staged the 2012 Sandy Hook school massacre.
Gibbs said his thoughts focused on the facts in the email and Abramovic’s own website.
“All I said is she has a book called Spirit Cooking, has some weird things in it like she is talking about blood, semen, and urine and different recipes in there for rituals and other events they do,” he said. “It’s kind of creepy stuff, of her own writing, in her own book.”
On another occasion he used a FreeRicky hashtag in support of the pseudonymous “alt-right” agitator Ricky Vaughn, who was banned by Twitter after spreading anti-Semitic and racist content.
“#Twitter down big today because they banned Ricky? #FreeRicky,” he wrote, according to CNN’s cache of archived tweets.
Four years later, Gibbs drew parallels with the growing cancel culture and said he was simply standing up for freedom of speech.
“I am against those offensive statements, no question about it,” he said. “But I am against the banning of conservatives on social media. That’s why I said, ‘Free Ricky.’”
He also defended a tweet from early 2017 in which he described the Democratic Party as the party of Islam and gender-bending. He said his comments had been taken out of context and that he had been contrasting the 1960s party — a party of low tax and national security — with its current incarnation.
“JFK’s Dem Party: Tax cuts, Anti-Commie, strong defense, lunar landing,” he wrote. “Today’s Dem party: Islam, gender-bending, anti-police, ‘u racist!’”
He insisted his choice of words was not intended as a smear but to illustrate how Democrats were gripped by divisive identity politics.
“I guess this was when things like Ilhan Omar were really coming to the surface,” he said, adding that Democrats wanted to weaponize victimhood. “Another group that they’ve added is Islam.”
A senior administration official said they expected Gibbs to appear before the Senate homeland security and government affairs committee in September. If confirmed, he would become Trump’s fourth OPM director and one of the most senior African American officials in an administration often characterized as largely white.
Gibbs said he hoped debate would focus on his background as a software engineer in Silicon Valley, experience working in Japan, masters in public administration, and his record at HUD, rather than old tweets.
It was ironic that the child of parents who lived in Alabama under Jim Crow laws was being accused of discrimination, he said. “I’m against all those forms of discrimination because my family directly experienced that, and I don’t want anyone to experience that.”
Assistant White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt urged a swift confirmation.
“Not only is John Gibbs exceptionally qualified to lead the OPM, but anyone who meets John will recognize how respectable, kind, and honest he is,” she said. “The Senate should move to confirm John immediately, so he can bring accountability and efficiency to OPM and ensure only the best and brightest employees are working for the United States government.”
