GOP Senator’s Speech Sparks Alarm Over ‘White Nationalist’ Overtones

Critics expressed deep alarm watching a Republican senator’s speech Tuesday at the National Conservatism Conference in Washington, D.C., with one New York Times columnist likening it to “straightforward white nationalist agitprop,” a reference to “agitation” and “propaganda.”

Sen. Eric Schmitt’s remarks made waves on Bluesky for promoting national conservatism as a pushback against global elites, immigration, and liberal ideas. He said America isn’t just an idea, but a country built on Western culture, Christianity, and the pioneering spirit of early settlers.

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Among his controversial statements:

• “Our country is, in this important sense, the most essentially Western nation. For our settler ancestors, the American frontier stretched out as a horizon of infinite possibility. It was here, on this continent, that the West realized its destiny.”
• “This is who we are. We’re a nation of settlers, explorers, and pioneers — born on the ocean waters that carried the first ships to our shores and forged in the crucible of a wild frontier. Our people tamed a continent, built a civilization from the wilderness, and wrote our nation’s name in history.”
• “America, in all its glory, is their gift to us, handed down across the generations. It belongs to us. It’s our birthright, our heritage, our destiny.”

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• “The Continental Army soldiers dying of frostbite at Valley Forge, the Pilgrims struggling to survive in the hard winter soil of Plymouth, the pioneers striking out from Missouri for the wild and dangerous frontier, the outnumbered Kentucky settlers repelling wave after wave of Indian war band attacks from behind their stockade walls — all of them would be astonished to hear that they were only fighting for a ‘proposition.'”
• “They believed they were forging a nation — a homeland for themselves and their descendants. They fought, they bled, they struggled, they died for us. They built this country for us.”

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• “If America is everything and everyone, then it is nothing and no one at all. But we know that’s not true.”

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