The Black voter engagement director for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign posted — and then scrubbed — a homophobic attack against the founder of a Black conservative group.
On Wednesday, Angela Stanton King, who has been working with Kennedy’s campaign for months, took to X (formerly known as Twitter) and Instagram to attack Diante Johnson, who hosted former President Donald Trump at a gala event for the Black Conservative Federation in South Carolina in February.
In a screenshot of the Instagram post shared with POLITICO, Stanton King called Johnson “an open flaming Feminine closet Gay.” She then continued in the caption: “How is he gonna lead heterosexual black men to the Republican Party?”
The post, which was on X and then shared as a screenshot on Instagram, was time-stamped April 10 at about 6pm. Both have since been deleted.
Stanton King’s post continues a pattern of behavior from Kennedy’s consultants that has drawn negative attention and forced the campaign to respond. These issues could turn off donors and volunteers.
Stanton King has run Kennedy’s Black engagement outreach, including organizing multiple events for him in Atlanta with community leaders at the members-only Commerce Club and a roundtable video at rapper Killer Mike’s barber shop. She has appeared in a campaign video alongside Kennedy, and she was an opening speaker at Kennedy’s vice presidential announcement event in March. All told, she has been paid $30,000 for “campaign consulting” by the Kennedy operation.
Johnson is the president of the Black Conservative Federation and previously served as Trump’s North Carolina field director and as a member of the Black Voices for Trump Advisory Board during the 2020 campaign.
The Kennedy campaign and Stanton King did not respond to a request for comment.
Johnson declined to comment. But a person familiar with the post, granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive attack, confirmed that Johnson saw the social media post.
Stanton King’s deleted posts come at a time when Kennedy’s campaign has also been asked to respond to issues related to other consultants.
The campaign’s New York state director Rita Palma drew backlash for promoting the idea that Donald Trump supporters should back Kennedy to hurt President Joe Biden in blue states. And last week, another staffer wrote in a fundraising email that those arrested in connection to the Jan. 6 insurrection were “stripped of their Constitutional liberties.”
The campaign later said that both situations came from “contractors” and not staffers, and the campaign said they severed ties with both. Though Palma said she plans to continue volunteeringfor the campaign.
During the last presidential cycle, Stanton King emerged as a vocal Trump supporter following a presidential pardon she received in 2020 for charges related to a car theft ring. But she no longer supports Republicans, telling POLITICO in a January interview, that the party was not sufficiently “pro-life” or “pro-Black.”
On Instagram earlier this week, Stanton King posted a Newsmax story headline screenshot about Melania Trump hosting a “GOP LGBT fundraiser” and wrote in the caption, “I love Trump but hear me out, someone said if the babies at [her non-profit] were Gay and not Black we may have gotten Republican support.”
On social media, Stanton King frequently promotes Kennedy in addition to posts advocating against abortion access. Stanton King runs a charity in Atlanta supporting women who choose not to have abortions.
She previously posted a video of Kennedy saying “every abortion is a tragedy” though he doesn’t support any legal action to ban the procedure. She added the caption that his comment “made [her] day” and “We’re making progress!”
Following the announcement of Nicole Shanahan as Kennedy’s running mate, she also posted “Nicole Shanahan and I don’t agree on Abortion but we do agree on Criminal Justice Reform. That’s what the INDEPENDENT space is all about.” She did not elaborate about which policies she and Shanahan are aligned on.