Shane Trejo, who heads one of Michigan’s Republican committees, wrote a 2017 piece that portrayed white supremacists who participated in the Charlottesville rally that year as “civil rights heroes.” The Republican official has also praised an antisemitic white supremacist for engaging in political violence and said that the left has failed to “stop white brilliance from emerging,” adding that “the cream rises to the top, after all.”
Trejo is the chair of the Michigan 11th District Republican Committee. He’s also a commentator who writes for the right-wing site Big League Politics, where he has been a source of conspiracy theories about the 2020 election being stolen in Michigan.
Daily Beast reporter Kelly Weill wrote on November 16 that Trejo “made headlines earlier this year when he encouraged the ouster of a fellow Republican who had voted to certify President Joe Biden’s election.” She reported that Trejo “used to host a podcast with a member of the white supremacist group Identity Evropa” and that he and the co-host “appear to have spoken favorably about white supremacists.”
Trejo was also the “News Editor” for the now-dormant website The Liberty Conservative, where he celebrated white supremacists and their use of political violence.
In August 2017, white supremacists gathered in Charlottesville, Virginia, for the “Unite the Right” rally in support of white nationalism. On August 12, a white supremacist killed anti-racism activist Heather Heyer with his car.
In an August 11, 2017, piece previewing the rally, Trejo defended the organizers of the event by writing:
