A Field Director for Trump Was Dismissed for Being a "White Nationalist"
Luke Meyer served as Trump’s regional field director for western Pennsylvania. In the online realm, however, he operated under the alias Alberto Barbarossa—a white nationalist—and co-hosted Richard Spencer's podcast.
TroibNews 
A white nationalist held a significant position on the Trump campaign in Pennsylvania for five months before being dismissed on Friday after the Pennsylvania GOP became aware of his views through my reporting.
Last week, I confirmed that Luke Meyer, the Trump campaign’s 24-year-old regional field director for Western Pennsylvania, uses the online alias Alberto Barbarossa. In this persona, he co-hosts the Alexandria podcast alongside Richard Spencer, known for organizing the 2017 white nationalist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Through his podcast appearances and online posts, Barbarossa openly espouses white nationalist beliefs.
“Why can’t we make New York, for example, white again? Why can’t we clear out and reclaim Miami?” Barbarossa questioned while guest hosting another white nationalist podcast in June. He added, “I’m not saying we need to be 100 percent homogeneous... A return to 80 percent, 90 percent white would probably be, probably the best we could hope for, to some degree.”
When I confronted Meyer with evidence linking him to Barbarossa, he acknowledged the connection and admitted to concealing his online identity from his colleagues in Trump Force 47, the faction of the campaign that organizes volunteers. “I am glad you pieced these little clues together like an antifa Nancy Drew,” he wrote in an email. “It made me realize how draining it has been having to conceal my true thoughts for as long as I have.”
Meyer’s case illustrates how fringe political ideologies are infiltrating the Trump-era GOP, with far-right groups recognizing the party as a means to achieve their objectives.
In an email to me, he elaborated on how he sensed his white nationalist ideas had already permeated the campaign. “Like the hydra, you can cut off my head and hold it up for the world to see, but two more will quietly appear and be working in the shadows,” Meyer expressed. He cited instances where extremist sentiments were subtly integrated into the campaign, remarking, “In a few years, one of those groypers [white supremacists] might even quietly bring me back in, with a stern warning for me to ‘be more careful next time.’”
After notifying Pennsylvania’s Trump Force 47 team of Meyer’s alias, my email was opened across Pennsylvania and New York.
The Republican Party of Pennsylvania responded to my inquiry, stating, “The employee in question was background-checked and vetted, but unbeknownst to us was operating separately under a pseudonym. If we’d had any inkling about his hidden and despicable activity he would never have been hired, and the instant we learned of it he was fired. We have no place in our Party or nation for people with such shameful, hateful views.”
Trump Force 47, funded by each state’s GOP, collaborates directly with the Trump campaign to generate volunteer efforts, deemed a “joint effort” by both the RNC and the campaign. Usually, comments about Trump Force 47 are addressed by Trump campaign officials; however, in this situation, the campaign refrained from commenting directly and referred me to the Pennsylvania GOP.
As the regional field director, Meyer’s responsibilities included training volunteer “captains” for the Trump campaign, which heavily relied on volunteers for get-out-the-vote initiatives. Field directors coordinated training sessions, both online and in person, for individuals expected to form their own volunteer teams, responsible for door-to-door outreach and phone calls to potential voters.
Following an assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, Barbarossa shared a photo of a Trump staff badge from the rally on X, stating, “What else can I say but that I lived through history?”
A week later, I received an anonymous tip revealing that Barbarossa was, in fact, Luke Meyer. Unlike many reporters, I have spent a year undercover within far-right circles and often receive tips from a broad spectrum of conservatives, including those wishing to keep extremists out of the party and neo-Nazis with grievances.
Investigating further, I discovered online evidence that corroborated the tip: Barbarossa tweeted about sharing a July 1 birthday with former KKK leader David Duke, a detail confirmed by court records showing Meyer shared the same birthday. Additionally, Instagram photos from Meyer’s girlfriend’s mother indicated he was in Clarksburg, West Virginia, the same day Barbarossa had posted about being there. The decisive evidence came when Barbarossa posted a photo of a television reflecting a window, which I instantly recognized as part of the Beaver County Trump Force 47 office.
With less than two weeks until the election, I drove from Washington to Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, to attend a Trump Force 47 event that Meyer had publicized.
I anticipated that Meyer would recognize me since we followed each other on X, but I decided to wait until the end of the event to confront him.
“I think we follow each other on Twitter,” I began. “Do you go by Alberto?”
“No, I usually go by Luke Meyer,” he replied, before querying how I knew him as Alberto. “Oh, just a podcast I listen to.”
“Do I just have that distinctive of a voice, I suppose?” he asked, after some back and forth, seemingly acknowledging our connection.
Upon being presented with my evidence, Meyer confirmed his online identity.
While I expected the revelation, it was nonetheless jarring.
Association with Spencer is typically a career-ending move in Republican politics, especially given Spencer's notoriety. In October 2016, he made headlines for giving a Nazi salute and exclaiming, “Hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory!” in front of a room full of white supremacists. After the rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, Spencer became synonymous with far-right extremism and continues to associate with white nationalists.
Despite this, Meyer/Barbarossa appeared on the Alexandria podcast with Spencer, promoting white nationalist rhetoric. His X account, which boasted approximately 1,500 followers, was replete with racially charged tweets.
During one episode of Alexandria, a guest host lamented the influence of individuals of Indian descent, likening it to the presence of Jews. “Indians are just sort of taking over... And, like, it’s just going to be something we have to sort of deal with on the margins,” he stated.
Barbarossa responded, “The country is not going to return to Ben Franklin’s heady, glorious ideals of a pure, Hyperborean ethnostate... But what you can preserve is something where we have complete and total control, something not unlike Rhodesia or South Africa.”
He has also made disparaging comments about Black individuals, suggesting that, “Not every Black is Ben Carson, but even the ones who are Ben Carson, you know, who is to say that their kid doesn’t turn out to be 50 Cent?”
In our email exchange, Meyer defended his controversial statements, saying, “My commentary, as you’ve quoted, can sometimes verge on the outlandish side, but you have to engage in some degree of hyperbole to make an entertaining podcast and cut through all the noise on X.” Since Friday, he has deleted his LinkedIn and X accounts, along with the Barbarossa X account.
Barbarossa has also emphasized his disagreement with many of Trump’s policies, claiming the former president “panders” too much to Jewish and Black voters. He remarked on social media, “Trump will stop pandering to Blacks when the sun rises in the West and sets in the East. When the seas go dry and mountains blow in the wind like leaves.”
On the anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, when Trump condemned “Jew haters” opposed to Israel, Barbarossa tweeted, “Trump out here badly underestimating just how much of his own campaign staff are ‘Jew-haters.’”
He has also shared images of a ring adorned with a sonnenrad, or Black Sun symbol, associated with neo-Nazi ideology. In response to my inquiry about the ring, he stated, “I am a REALLY big fan of German Renaissance castles.”
In the podcast, Barbarossa criticized Trump as a “con artist,” mocking the former president’s marketing ventures: “He’s transformed that into a political movement so well that he can stand up and sell $60 Bibles and $400 sneakers to his crowd of adoring fans, and none of them will question it.”
Yet, Barbarossa still supports Trump, explaining that he believes in causing societal chaos and decline to prepare for a pro-white resurgence—a philosophy known as “accelerationism.” He stated, “I WILL be voting for Donald Trump, the Accelerationist candidate, in my swing state in November.”
Accelerationists posit that Trump’s presidency generates chaos within the country, manifesting through events like January 6 and the protests surrounding George Floyd’s death. They believe such unrest will incite fear and anxiety among citizens, fostering nativist and racist sentiments.
In an email, Meyer remarked, “I really do think Trump’s re-election will help to hasten the inevitable, but I don’t take any credit for pushing the Overton Window rightward, at least not in my capacity as a Trump staffer. The truth is that I am a comparatively small cog in the conservative machine, one of easily thousands in this country.”
“Every second man under the age of thirty in the GOP believes 90 percent of the same things I believe,” he added. “They just don’t have the platform that I do, and can remain undetected as I had done.”
Ian Smith contributed to this report for TROIB News
Last week, I confirmed that Luke Meyer, the Trump campaign’s 24-year-old regional field director for Western Pennsylvania, uses the online alias Alberto Barbarossa. In this persona, he co-hosts the Alexandria podcast alongside Richard Spencer, known for organizing the 2017 white nationalist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Through his podcast appearances and online posts, Barbarossa openly espouses white nationalist beliefs.
“Why can’t we make New York, for example, white again? Why can’t we clear out and reclaim Miami?” Barbarossa questioned while guest hosting another white nationalist podcast in June. He added, “I’m not saying we need to be 100 percent homogeneous... A return to 80 percent, 90 percent white would probably be, probably the best we could hope for, to some degree.”
When I confronted Meyer with evidence linking him to Barbarossa, he acknowledged the connection and admitted to concealing his online identity from his colleagues in Trump Force 47, the faction of the campaign that organizes volunteers. “I am glad you pieced these little clues together like an antifa Nancy Drew,” he wrote in an email. “It made me realize how draining it has been having to conceal my true thoughts for as long as I have.”
Meyer’s case illustrates how fringe political ideologies are infiltrating the Trump-era GOP, with far-right groups recognizing the party as a means to achieve their objectives.
In an email to me, he elaborated on how he sensed his white nationalist ideas had already permeated the campaign. “Like the hydra, you can cut off my head and hold it up for the world to see, but two more will quietly appear and be working in the shadows,” Meyer expressed. He cited instances where extremist sentiments were subtly integrated into the campaign, remarking, “In a few years, one of those groypers [white supremacists] might even quietly bring me back in, with a stern warning for me to ‘be more careful next time.’”
After notifying Pennsylvania’s Trump Force 47 team of Meyer’s alias, my email was opened across Pennsylvania and New York.
The Republican Party of Pennsylvania responded to my inquiry, stating, “The employee in question was background-checked and vetted, but unbeknownst to us was operating separately under a pseudonym. If we’d had any inkling about his hidden and despicable activity he would never have been hired, and the instant we learned of it he was fired. We have no place in our Party or nation for people with such shameful, hateful views.”
Trump Force 47, funded by each state’s GOP, collaborates directly with the Trump campaign to generate volunteer efforts, deemed a “joint effort” by both the RNC and the campaign. Usually, comments about Trump Force 47 are addressed by Trump campaign officials; however, in this situation, the campaign refrained from commenting directly and referred me to the Pennsylvania GOP.
As the regional field director, Meyer’s responsibilities included training volunteer “captains” for the Trump campaign, which heavily relied on volunteers for get-out-the-vote initiatives. Field directors coordinated training sessions, both online and in person, for individuals expected to form their own volunteer teams, responsible for door-to-door outreach and phone calls to potential voters.
Following an assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, Barbarossa shared a photo of a Trump staff badge from the rally on X, stating, “What else can I say but that I lived through history?”
A week later, I received an anonymous tip revealing that Barbarossa was, in fact, Luke Meyer. Unlike many reporters, I have spent a year undercover within far-right circles and often receive tips from a broad spectrum of conservatives, including those wishing to keep extremists out of the party and neo-Nazis with grievances.
Investigating further, I discovered online evidence that corroborated the tip: Barbarossa tweeted about sharing a July 1 birthday with former KKK leader David Duke, a detail confirmed by court records showing Meyer shared the same birthday. Additionally, Instagram photos from Meyer’s girlfriend’s mother indicated he was in Clarksburg, West Virginia, the same day Barbarossa had posted about being there. The decisive evidence came when Barbarossa posted a photo of a television reflecting a window, which I instantly recognized as part of the Beaver County Trump Force 47 office.
With less than two weeks until the election, I drove from Washington to Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, to attend a Trump Force 47 event that Meyer had publicized.
I anticipated that Meyer would recognize me since we followed each other on X, but I decided to wait until the end of the event to confront him.
“I think we follow each other on Twitter,” I began. “Do you go by Alberto?”
“No, I usually go by Luke Meyer,” he replied, before querying how I knew him as Alberto. “Oh, just a podcast I listen to.”
“Do I just have that distinctive of a voice, I suppose?” he asked, after some back and forth, seemingly acknowledging our connection.
Upon being presented with my evidence, Meyer confirmed his online identity.
While I expected the revelation, it was nonetheless jarring.
Association with Spencer is typically a career-ending move in Republican politics, especially given Spencer's notoriety. In October 2016, he made headlines for giving a Nazi salute and exclaiming, “Hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory!” in front of a room full of white supremacists. After the rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, Spencer became synonymous with far-right extremism and continues to associate with white nationalists.
Despite this, Meyer/Barbarossa appeared on the Alexandria podcast with Spencer, promoting white nationalist rhetoric. His X account, which boasted approximately 1,500 followers, was replete with racially charged tweets.
During one episode of Alexandria, a guest host lamented the influence of individuals of Indian descent, likening it to the presence of Jews. “Indians are just sort of taking over... And, like, it’s just going to be something we have to sort of deal with on the margins,” he stated.
Barbarossa responded, “The country is not going to return to Ben Franklin’s heady, glorious ideals of a pure, Hyperborean ethnostate... But what you can preserve is something where we have complete and total control, something not unlike Rhodesia or South Africa.”
He has also made disparaging comments about Black individuals, suggesting that, “Not every Black is Ben Carson, but even the ones who are Ben Carson, you know, who is to say that their kid doesn’t turn out to be 50 Cent?”
In our email exchange, Meyer defended his controversial statements, saying, “My commentary, as you’ve quoted, can sometimes verge on the outlandish side, but you have to engage in some degree of hyperbole to make an entertaining podcast and cut through all the noise on X.” Since Friday, he has deleted his LinkedIn and X accounts, along with the Barbarossa X account.
Barbarossa has also emphasized his disagreement with many of Trump’s policies, claiming the former president “panders” too much to Jewish and Black voters. He remarked on social media, “Trump will stop pandering to Blacks when the sun rises in the West and sets in the East. When the seas go dry and mountains blow in the wind like leaves.”
On the anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, when Trump condemned “Jew haters” opposed to Israel, Barbarossa tweeted, “Trump out here badly underestimating just how much of his own campaign staff are ‘Jew-haters.’”
He has also shared images of a ring adorned with a sonnenrad, or Black Sun symbol, associated with neo-Nazi ideology. In response to my inquiry about the ring, he stated, “I am a REALLY big fan of German Renaissance castles.”
In the podcast, Barbarossa criticized Trump as a “con artist,” mocking the former president’s marketing ventures: “He’s transformed that into a political movement so well that he can stand up and sell $60 Bibles and $400 sneakers to his crowd of adoring fans, and none of them will question it.”
Yet, Barbarossa still supports Trump, explaining that he believes in causing societal chaos and decline to prepare for a pro-white resurgence—a philosophy known as “accelerationism.” He stated, “I WILL be voting for Donald Trump, the Accelerationist candidate, in my swing state in November.”
Accelerationists posit that Trump’s presidency generates chaos within the country, manifesting through events like January 6 and the protests surrounding George Floyd’s death. They believe such unrest will incite fear and anxiety among citizens, fostering nativist and racist sentiments.
In an email, Meyer remarked, “I really do think Trump’s re-election will help to hasten the inevitable, but I don’t take any credit for pushing the Overton Window rightward, at least not in my capacity as a Trump staffer. The truth is that I am a comparatively small cog in the conservative machine, one of easily thousands in this country.”
“Every second man under the age of thirty in the GOP believes 90 percent of the same things I believe,” he added. “They just don’t have the platform that I do, and can remain undetected as I had done.”
Ian Smith contributed to this report for TROIB News
