Since last year, Lauren Witzke — an ex-Republican Senate candidate who ran on an anti-immigrant platform — has been solidifying her connections to white nationalists. While running against Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) she appeared on a livestream with white nationalist Peter Brimelow and hired an antisemite to manage her campaign.

Following her loss in Nov. 2020, Witzke has appeared on shows hosted by white nationalists Paul Ray Ramsey, James Edwards, and Jason Köhne. However, on Mar. 16, 2021, Witzke made a guest appearance on The Realist Report, a podcast hosted by Neo-Nazi and Holocaust denier John Friend.

The Long Beach, CA-based white supremacist isn’t subtle about his beliefs. A contributor to the American Free Press and The Barnes Review — two virulently antisemitic publications — Friend has openly and repeatedly praised Adolf Hitler, referred to the Holocaust as the “Holohoax,” and claimed Jews orchestrated the 9/11 attacks.

In a Dec. 2015 interview uncovered by Media Matters, Friend claimed that Hitler and the Nazis “were the greatest thing that’s happened to Western civilization.”

On his Twitter account, Friend has called Hitler, among other things, “the man,” a “righteous and honorable statesman,” and a “righteous German patriot” who “led a movement exposing Jewish treachery, criminality, & their global agenda to destroy Western civilization.” In an Apr. 20, 2015 tweet Friend wished Hitler a happy birthday.

In 2015 Friend sent mocking tweets about a visit to a Holocaust museum. In one he wrote, “Lol literally first exhibit I encounter at US Holohoax Museum – a ‘survivor’ begging for shekels!” He included the hashtag #WithJewsWeLose. In another he shared a photo of a note he left about “prevent[ing] #WhiteGenocide.”

Friend has called Israel an “ethnocentric, genocidal supremacist state,” claimed that Jews “basically control the US government,” and written that the “Jewish diaspora pushes open borders, massive non-White migration, & other anti-White policies in the West in their explicit White genocide agenda.”

In Mar. 2020 he expressed doubt over the Holocaust, school shootings, and the COVID-19 pandemic. In Sept. 2020 he tweeted that “All of the other destructive, anti-White lies and scams in our modern era stem from the Big Lies associated with the fake ‘Holocaust’ story, Hitler and ‘the Nazis’, and WWII generally.”

On multiple occasions he’s used the antisemitic triple parentheses hate symbol to attack Jewish people and the press. In a Feb. 2, 2021 tweet, for example, Friend suggested that a “totally savage Black on White hate crime” would be “covered up by the (((mass media))).”

And shortly after the 19th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks Friend tweeted, “Never forget Jewish criminals planned & executed 9/11.”

During his interview with Witzke, Friend said he had watched her on the Killstream, a far-right online show hosted by Ethan Ralph, and decided to invite her on his own show. Witzke discussed her failed senate campaign, demonized immigrants, repeated the lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, and claimed Trump supporters are being “persecuted.”

Witzke told Friend that “we’re bringing in people that want us dead, essentially,” and blamed immigrants for low wages and the inability of Americans to “afford having a family and children.” She claimed that white people are “dying deaths of despair” and that “nobody wants to talk about it” because no one wants to “defend white people.”

“But even now I think they’ve seen that it’s a targeted attack against them,” she continued. “So now we’re actually able to actually speak up and be like ‘Hey, critical race theory is not okay.’ Openly calling for the execution of white people or calling us racists because we were born with white skin, it’s dangerous.”

Witzke added that immigrants are “only here for economic reasons” and see Americans as “disposable assets.” Friend agreed with her and said that “generally speaking, the people that are coming here … they’re not here to become a productive member of society or assimilate and champion American ideals.”

Friend complained that Americans are “bending over backwards to allow illegals and other people that shouldn’t even be here in the first place to take over the country,” “exploit it,” and “benefit themselves while hurting our own country and hurting our own people.”

Toward the end of the episode Witzke began ranting about the “mass silencing of conservatives,” “pedophilia,” and being told to wear “three masks.” “You know all this stuff, it’s certainly Orwellian — that’s a good way to phrase it,” she said. “But they want civil discourse [sic].”

Witzke launched into a defense of the right-wing insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021 in order to disrupt the certification of the 2020 presidential election results.

“They’re using — Joe Biden’s DOJ is literally using the Capitol rally, or if you supported President Trump, as political persecution against conservatives,” she said. “This is America. We have rights. But not anymore, it doesn’t seem. It seems like they can do anything.”

She also said that she knows people who attended the Jan. 6 rally and didn’t enter the Capitol building but who were nonetheless arrested.

John Friend decried the FBI’s focus on “white supremacists” and “conspiracy theorists” — although such individuals had not been a top priority until relatively recently. “Meanwhile, the radical Left, BLM, antifa have been openly engaging in a legitimate violent insurrection against the country — legitimate rioting and looting and outright terrorism,” he said.

“And the government is not concerned at all with these people.”