Merritt Corrigan, a deputy White House liaison for the U.S. Agency for International Development, was fired in August 2020 after posting a series of anti-LGBTQ tweets that said, among other things, that “our homo-empire couldn’t tolerate even one commercial enterprise not in full submission to the tyrannical LGBT agenda.”
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/usaid-official-fired-after-anti-lgbtq-social-media-posts
Corrigan wrote in another post: “Liberal democracy is little more than a front for the war being waged against us by those who fundamentally despise not only our way of life, but life itself.”
USAID describes itself as the “world’s premier international development agency and a catalytic actor driving development results. USAID’s work advances U.S. national security and economic prosperity, demonstrates American generosity, and promotes a path to recipient self-reliance and resilience.”
There’s nothing in the mission statement about the organization being a “catalytic actor” in the dissemination of lunatic views promoting bigoted, fanatical zealots.
House Democrats demanded Corrigan’s resignation over her history of making “homophobic, misogynistic, and xenophobic” comments.
“We are left wondering how Ms. Corrigan is able to effectively serve an agency whose principles are so clearly antithetical to her own,” the letter said.
In addition, Politico reported Corrigan, who once worked in the Hungarian embassy, praised the government of Prime Minister Victor Orban – a far-right politician who has cracked down on protest, academic freedom, and other civil liberties — as “the shining champion of Western civilization.”
There is a photograph Merritt Corrigan wearing a “Women for Trump” shirt working at the Official Trump Store at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in February 2018.
The CPAC store could have made a killing off the T-shirt, “I was groped by Donald Trump and I all I got was this crummy shirt” — even if it was only bought by women who Trump groped.
In addition, Corrigan wrote in an op-ed piece that raised concerns about women today being “far from the guardianship of a loving husband.”
Since joining USAID in June, Corrigan’s tweets and opinion pieces have said that women shouldn’t be in elected office and that homosexuality was an “appalling sexual perversion” loyal to Satan. She also denounced refugees and immigrants.
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/29/politics/merritt-corrigan-usaid/index.html
After Corrigan learned of her dismissal, she tweeted: “For too long, I’ve remained silent as the media has attacked me for my Christian beliefs, which are shared by the majority of Americans. Let me [be] clear: Gay marriage isn’t marriage. Men aren’t women. US-funded Tunisian LGBT soap operas aren’t America First.”
David Stacy, government affairs director for the Human Rights Campaign, said that Corrigan “is not unique in the Trump Administration,” adding: “She is the exact type of anti-LGBTQ zealot that Trump recruits and places in positions of power. Corrigan’s biased and harmful beliefs are not shared by ‘the vast majority of Americans.’ Corrigan is a symptom of a larger problem, it’s time to hold the Trump-Pence administration accountable at the ballot box and elect a leader this November who supports the fundamental humanity of LGBTQ people and appoint people who share that basic decency.”
Corrigan then said she would be joined at a press conference – not by an attorney who would challenge her dismissal or not by an expert in religious freedom but by what CNBC referred to “conservative conspiracy theory peddlers, Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman, who have a pattern of making outrageous claims unsupported by credible evidence.”
This story then completely veered off the rails into a right-wing galaxy far, far away.
Corrigan tweeted that she had been kidnapped by Wuhl and Burkman, who then called their own press conference to deny it.
The Wuhl-Burkman press conference appeared on You Tube.
