Madison Cawthorn, the controversial 25-year-old Republican House candidate who broke President Trump's record of successful endorsements by beating the White House-backed Lynda Bennett in North Carolina's primary in June, earned praise on Wednesday night for his RNC speech. "God protected my mind, and my ability to speak," Cawthorn, who was paralyzed in a major car accident, told viewers. "So, I say to people who feel forgotten, ignored and invisible: I see you. I hear you."
It's true that Cawthorn has faced scrutiny. An investigation by Jezebel earlier this month found that Cawthorn appears to make a number of winks to "white supremacist-adjacent nationalism," including the name of his LLC, "SPQR," an acronym that is popular among white nationalists, as well as possessing a decorative Betsy Ross flag, which has been "similarly appropriated by some extremist movements." He also follows exactly 88 people on Twitter, that being a known code for "Heil Hitler." Cawthorn additionally got into hot water for a 2017 Instagram post in which he visited Adolf Hitler's vacation home, known as the Eagle's Nest, and called the leader "the Fuhrer" in the caption (Cawthorn later denounced white nationalism).
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As The New Republic notes, Cawthorn "could be a rising star of the party or an alt-right Trojan horse. Or maybe there's no difference between the two."
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