Lucian Wintrich

Lucian Wintrich
Born Lucian Einhorn
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States
Education Bard College
Occupation
  • Writer
Years active 2016–present
Employer The Gateway Pundit (2016-2018)
Notable work Twinks4Trump (2016, photo series)
Website lucianwintrich.com

Lucian Baxter Wintrich IV is an American writer, speaker, and the former White House correspondent for The Gateway Pundit.[1] He was among the first members of the White House Press Corps to be openly gay and one of the youngest.[2] Wintrich has been described as a member of the "alt-right", an association he has denied.[3][4][5][6][7]

Early life

Wintrich was born Lucian Einhorn in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and grew up in its collegiate Squirrel Hill neighborhood.[8] He received his BA from Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, where he majored in political science.[9][10] Prior to high school, Wintrich attended the experimental prep school Fanny Edel Falk Laboratory School, and then Taylor Allderdice High School.[11] Wintrich's paternal grandfather, Jerzy Einhorn, was a medical doctor born in Sosnowiec, Poland, who served as an officer in the Polish resistance.[12][13][14] Wintrich's own father is Jewish.[15]

By age 18, Wintrich had legally changed his name to "Lucian Baxter Wintrich IV." He claims that he did so both to protect his relatives and to boost his public persona.[8] Wintrich's adopted generational suffix is fictitious.[8]

Career

Wintrich attained public attention with his pro-Donald Trump presidential candidacy series "Twinks4Trump", photographs of mostly shirtless gay twinks sporting "Make America Great Again" baseball caps.[16] According to David Freedlander of The Daily Beast, Wintrich was also organizer of a "performance art show" which Wintrich billed as "the first pro-Trump art show in the nation's history".[17][18][19] Wintrich has collaborated with Milo Yiannopoulos, a former editor at Breitbart News.[20] Although he initially embraced the alt-right label, he later disavowed it, saying that Richard Spencer ruined the term.[21][22][23]

The day before Donald Trump's inauguration, Wintrich was named as the inaugural White House correspondent for The Gateway Pundit, which was newly granted White House briefing credentials by the incoming administration and is a right-wing website which is known to publish hoaxes and conspiracy theories.[24][25][26][27][28]

Controversies

On February 15, 2017, Wintrich was scheduled to speak to the College Republicans at NYU, but the talk was postponed due to security concerns.[29] On March 23, 2017, he eventually spoke to the NYU College Republicans.[30][31]

On March 10, 2017, Wintrich was confronted by a fellow White House correspondent, Jon Decker of Fox News in the White House Briefing Room,[32][33] who loudly accused Wintrich of being a white supremacist. After the briefing, Wintrich was approached by April Ryan of American Urban Radio Networks, who filmed him answering questions about whether or not he was a racist. Ben Jacobs of The Guardian described Wintrich engaging with Ryan as him "holding his own briefing because nothing matters."[34]

On November 28, 2017, Wintrich was arrested after an altercation in which he grabbed a woman who had snatched his papers from the speaker's lectern he was using during a talk at the University of Connecticut entitled "It's OK to Be White". He was charged with breach of peace.[35][36] In December 2017, the charges against Wintrich were dropped and the woman who took the papers was charged with attempted sixth-degree larceny and disorderly conduct. She stated through her attorney that she took Wintrich's speech as a form of protest. The charges against her were later dropped after she agreed to a one year campus ban and a $500 donation to the university.[37][38]

In February 2018, Wintrich tweeted the false conspiracy theory that some survivors of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, who had spoken to the media about a need for gun reform in the wake of the tragedy, were "trained actors who were recruited by [George] Soros-linked organizations as spokespeople after a crisis."[39] The tweet was liked by Donald Trump Jr. but was widely criticized by others, notably the shooting survivor David Hogg, whom Wintrich had accused of being "heavily coached" for interviews.[40]

On August 10, 2018, Right Wing Watch published an account of Wintrich's appearance on a white nationalist podcast hosted by Nick Fuentes.[1] During the podcast, Wintrich and Fuentes discussed immigration, "anti-white racism", and the alleged intellectual inferiority of certain ethnic groups.[1]

That same day, The Gateway Pundit founder Jim Hoft tweeted that Wintrich had left the organization several weeks earlier.[41]

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Gateway Pundit's Lucian Wintrich Says He's 'On Sabbatical,' Appears On White Nationalist's Podcast | Right Wing Watch". Right Wing Watch. Retrieved 2018-08-13.
  2. ↑ "Controversial 'Twinks4Trump' Founder Joins White House Press Corps".
  3. ↑ Marantz, Andrew (6 July 2017). "The Alt-Right Branding War Has Torn the Movement in Two" – via www.newyorker.com.
  4. ↑ "Two members of alt-right accused of making white supremacist hand signs in White House after receiving press passes". The Independent. April 29, 2017.
  5. ↑ "Alt-right journalist Lucian Wintrich once played clown-zombie". Page Six. April 17, 2017.
  6. ↑ From Alt Right to Alt Lite: Naming the Hate. Anti-Defamation League.
  7. ↑ Censored 2018: The Top Censored Stories and Media Analysis of 2016-2017. Project Censored, Sonoma State University, 2017
  8. 1 2 3 "Lucian Wintrich is a White House correspondent better known for trolling than reporting". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Retrieved 2018-08-13.
  9. ↑ "READER ALERT=> Look for TGP's Jim Hoft and Lucian Wintrich at Today's White House Press Briefing". Thegatewaypundit.com. 2017-02-13. Retrieved 2017-04-03.
  10. ↑ "Hannah Arendt Center Conferences & Events". hac.bard.edu.
  11. ↑ "Local high school students create popular podcast - The Tartan". Retrieved 2017-06-03.
  12. ↑ Ove, Torsten (July 24, 2011). "Pittsburgh doctor, Polish warrior: The Jerzy Einhorn story". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Retrieved May 31, 2017.
  13. ↑ Einhorn, Jerzy (2005). Recollections of the End of an Era: Poland 1919-1945. AuthorHouse. Retrieved 31 May 2017.
  14. ↑ Johnson, Scott (28 April 2017). "48 Hours With the Media Troll Who Is Now Part of the White House Press Corps". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 28 May 2017.
  15. ↑ "48 Hours With the Media Troll Who Is Now Part of the White House Press Corps". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 2018-08-13.
  16. ↑ Wintrich, Lucian B. (2016-08-02). "Twinks4Trump Creator: 5 Things the Media Gets Wrong About Gay Conservatives". Advocate.com. Retrieved 2017-04-03.
  17. ↑ David Freedlander. "A Pro-Trump Art Show—But the 'Artists' Are…Interesting". The Daily Beast. Retrieved 2017-04-03.
  18. ↑ "NYU postpones speech by Twinks4Trump creator, White House correspondent Lucian Wintrich".
  19. ↑ "Lucian Wintrich Talk to NYU College Republicans Postponed". 14 February 2017.
  20. ↑ Andrew Buncombe (February 14, 2017), Gateway Pundit: Pro-Donald Trump blog granted White House press credentials, New York: The Independent, retrieved February 14, 2017
  21. ↑ Marantz, Andrew. "The Alt-Right Branding War Has Torn the Movement in Two". The New Yorker. The New Yorker. Retrieved 2 November 2017.
  22. ↑ Michael, Grynbaum. "White House Grants Press Credentials to a Pro-Trump Blog". The New York Times. The New York Times. Retrieved 13 February 2017.
  23. ↑ Justin, Moyer. "'Alt-right' and 'alt-lite'? Conservatives plan dueling conservative rallies Sunday in D.C." The Washington Post. The Washington Post. Retrieved 23 June 2017.
  24. ↑ "'Real News' Joins the White House Briefing Room". POLITICO Magazine. Archived from the original on 2017-02-20. Retrieved 2017-02-23.
  25. ↑ Maheshwari, Sapna (2016-11-20). "How Fake News Goes Viral: A Case Study". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on 2017-02-18. Retrieved 2017-02-23.
  26. ↑ Andrew Buncombe (14 February 2017), Gateway Pundit: Pro-Donald Trump blog granted White House press credentials, New York: The Independent, archived from the original on 14 February 2017, retrieved 14 February 2017, Gateway Pundit published false reports about Hillary Clinton's health and voter fraud
  27. ↑ Michael M. Grynbaum (13 February 2017), White House Grants Press Credentials to a Pro-Trump Blog, The New York Times, archived from the original on 14 February 2017, retrieved 14 February 2017
  28. ↑ "'Real News' Joins the White House Briefing Room". Politico.
  29. ↑ McEvoy, Jemima. "Administration Postpones NYUCR's Guest Speaker Lucian Wintrich Due to Security Concerns". nyunews.com.
  30. ↑ Laura Casado (February 14, 2017). "UPDATE: Lucian Wintrich talk to NYU College Republicans postponed". The Tab. Retrieved 2017-04-03.
  31. ↑ "Washington Square News : Lucian Wintrich Speaks at NYU After Postponed Visit". Nyunews.com. 2017-03-24. Retrieved 2017-04-03.
  32. ↑ "Drama in White House press room as Fox reporter vehemently denies he assaulted right-wing blogger". Business Insider.
  33. ↑ "Fox News Radio correspondent confronts Gateway Pundit reporter in White House briefing room". Politico.
  34. ↑ "Discrediting and Obstructing the Mainstream Media". Der Spiegel. 2017-03-24. Retrieved 2017-04-03.
  35. ↑ Lurye, Rebecca (November 28, 2017). "Lucian Wintrich, White House Correspondent For Gateway Pundit, Arrested After Altercation At UConn Talk". Hartford Courant. Retrieved November 29, 2017.
  36. ↑ Quintana, Chris (29 November 2017). "Far-Right Speaker Is Arrested at U. of Connecticut After Physical Confrontation". The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved 1 December 2017.
  37. ↑ Rondinone, Nicholas (11 December 2017). "Quinebaug College Adviser Charged After Lucian Wintrich's UConn Event". Hartfort Courant. Retrieved 11 December 2017.
  38. ↑ "Woman who stole 'OK To Be White' notes agrees to campus ban". Houston Chronicle. 23 January 2018. Retrieved 4 February 2018.
  39. ↑ Pearce, Matt. "Conspiracy theories about Florida school shooting survivors have gone mainstream". latimes.com.
  40. ↑ "Florida shooting survivor, 17, calls out Donald Trump Jr. for liking conspiracy tweets".
  41. ↑ "Jim Hoft on Twitter". Twitter. Retrieved 2018-08-13.
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