Donald Trump put a right-wing radio host on the board of a national park. Emails show the chaos that ensued.

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First, some background: Michael Savage (real name: Michael A. Weiner) is a right-wing shock jock whose 27-year career has left a trail of racist, xenophobic, and homophobic comments.
Savage, for instance, has decried “the self-genocide of America’s European American majority” and warned that immigrants from the “turd world” spread diseases like Ebola and COVID. He has raged against “anal rights" and the “insane push for more gay freedom.”
Last May, Trump named Savage to the board of directors of the Presidio Trust, the federal corporation that runs the nearly 1,200-acre urban park at the foot of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge.
By law, the board’s seats must go to people with “extensive knowledge and experience” in city planning, finance, real estate development, or resource conservation.

Savage said Trump picked him for his “environmental background."
In his pre-radio days, Savage was a hippie, herbalist, nutritionist, and the author of books like “Plant a Tree” and “Herbs That Heal,” and he has claimed to have “spent decades searching and saving tropical rainforests.” He has a PhD in nutritional ethnomedicine.
Yet, Savage detests the “Environmental Propaganda Agency” and thinks climate change is a “scam.” He’s claimed that COVID surges are caused by Mexicans trying to “flood the gringo hospitals” and has vowed to “join an armed militia”⁠ before getting vaccinated.
Unsurprisingly, Savage’s first months as a Presidio Trust board member were marked by prickly outbursts, culminating in a sudden push to inject his toxic politics into park business, according to emails obtained by @daudig. https://bit.ly/2RxMAjj 
For instance, when he was asked to attend a short ethics review with a staff attorney, he wrote via email, “What is this emphasis on ‘ethics’? Am I somehow suspect?” The session, he was told, was mandatory for new board members.
Savage, writing from a personal email account with the handle “joe shmo,” replied, “Well i can understand the need for this procedure. But I find it offensive to answer to some lawyer.” (He eventually relented and took the training.)
When he was told he’d have to fill out a standard financial disclosure form, Savage balked. “SINCE I AM NOT AN EMPLOYEE OF THE U.S. GOVERNMENT, NOR RECEIVING ANY COMPENSATION I SEE NO NEED TO FILL OUT THE ‘ETHICS’ FORM,” he wrote. (He eventually submitted the form.)
On July 23, Savage attended his first public board meeting, held via Zoom. During the comment period, one of the Presidio’s residents began to speak about how Savage’s well-documented views relate to the trust’s diversity, equity, and inclusion plan.
She calmly noted that the Southern Poverty Law Center has reported that Savage “subscribes to the white genocide conspiracy theory” and has blamed immigrants for spreading disease.
She had started to describe his comments about Muslims when the board chair cut her short, saying that bringing up board members’ personal views was “outside the scope” of the meeting.
After the meeting, Savage fired off an email to his colleagues demanding, “WHO PERMITTED THE LAST SPEAKER TO ATTACK ME? HOW DID SHE GET ON THE LIST OF ‘APPROVED SPEAKERS’?”
Presidio Trust CEO Jean Fraser responded that public comments at board meetings are not pre-screened. “[W]e are required under the First Amendment not to censor people however offensive their comments might be,” she wrote in an email.
Savage snapped, “Yes, I am aware of the ‘law’. Do not appreciate your lecture. Not what I asked. How did this hateful person get to be chosen?…Did she indicate she wanted to verbally abuse my good name?”
In one particular episode regarding the Presidio’s Heritage Museum, which includes an exhibit about the former Army base’s role in Japanese American internment during WWII, things got pretty ugly.
After another board meeting, Savage wrote his colleagues, “Now that we are looking more closely at the Heritage exhibit, I want to discuss the INCLUSION OF THE DEFEAT OF HITLER! There is far too much emphasis on the JAPANESE INTERNMENT.”
He went on: “And, while we are at it, we must emphasize that it was Franklin Roosevelt, a far left LIBERAL, who interred the Japanese. We must insist on HISTORICAL truths. When can we address these concerns?”
Apparently, Savage’s messages were met with silence; none of his fellow board members responded to his comments via email.
It wasn’t the first time Savage has weighed in on this awful chapter in American history. In his book, “Stop Mass Hysteria,” he writes that Japanese internment was “ultimately wrong, but it was tactical and reasoned.”
During one of his radio shows last year, he noted that the government had also violated some Italian and German Americans’ civil rights during World War II. “The Italians and the Germans didn’t complain,” he said. “They didn’t cry. They didn’t demand reparations.”
When @daudig asked to speak with the trust’s board members about their responses to Savage’s opinions on the museum and the internment of Japanese Americans; a spokesperson said that they “do not discuss Presidio Trust matters with the press.”
Even if his colleagues have an issue with Savage’s rhetoric, they may have a difficult time getting rid of him. According to the trust, only the president may remove or replace sitting board members.

As he’s told his listeners, “You have only heard the beginning of my outrage.”
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