According to reporting by both the Washington Post and Media Matters for America, Trump administration appointee William C. Bradford — former attorney general of the Chiricahua Apache Nation and right-wing columnist — has a long history of bigoted tweets and columns, including tweets questioning transgender and gender-nonconforming identity as a “mental illness” and columns calling for a second U.S. Civil War.
Bradford was appointed by President Donald Trump to run the Department of Energy’s Office of Indian Energy, the office that awards grants to indigenous communities for energy development and capacity building. The appointment does not require Senate confirmation.
Dino Grandoni of the Washington Post reported on Bradford’s history of tweeting “disparaging remarks” about the “real and imagined ethnic, religious and gender identities” of everyone from former President Barack Obama to NBC reporter Megyn Kelly.
Bradford called Facebook founder Mark Zuckerburg a “little arrogant self-hating Jew” and referred to Obama as “a Kenyan creampuff.”
Since Grandoni’s reporting was published, Media Matters uncovered more instances of hateful tweets and columns written by Bradford, including two instances where Bradford suggested that a second U.S. civil war might be necessary if Democrats were elected to the White House.
In January 2016, Bradford wrote in his column on Communities Digital News — an online site that was a part of the Washington Times until 2014 — that if Hillary Clinton were elected in the 2016 presidential election, “a second U.S. Civil War may be necessary to pull up the roots Communism has sunk deep into our soil.” In 2015, he also wrote that only through committing to “limited government, a traditional understanding of the Constitution, and a relearning of the concept of the ‘enemy’” could the United States “ensure that Americans never suffer the hell of civil war again.”
Bradford also called Clinton “may be [sic] the most godless person in D.C.” He also wrote that putting women in combat “is a deliberate act of national self-destruction and a gift to our enemies.”
Bradford also tweeted transphobic and Islamophobic rhetoric, Media Matters reports, questioning whether transgender and gender-nonconforming identity counts as a “mental illness” and saying, “imagine a world without Islam.”
Following the Washington Post’s reporting, Bradford issued a written apology for his statements.
“As a minority and member of the Jewish faith, I sincerely apologize for my disrespectful and offensive comments,” he wrote. “These comments are inexcusable and I do not stand by them. Now, as a public servant, I hold myself to a higher standard, and I will work every day to better the lives of all Americans.”
Bradford is hardly the first Trump administration appointee with a record of bigoted comments. Senior White House adviser Steve Bannon has a history of anti-Semitic, misogynistic, and bigoted comments, and has openly disparaged women, calling them “dykes.”