Wayne Allyn Root
Wayne Allyn Root is a conservative American author, radio host, and conspiracy theorist. He is the host of The Wayne Allyn Root Show on KBET and the USA Radio Network and formerly on Newsmax TV. Root was an opinion columnist for the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Root was the Vice Presidential nominee for the Libertarian Party in the 2008 presidential election. In 2012, he left the Libertarian Party, rejoined the Republican Party, and endorsed and voted for Mitt Romney.
Early life and education
Root attended the Thornton-Donovan School in New Rochelle, New York, and was a member of the class of 1983 at Columbia University, studying pre-law and political science.In June 2016, Root described himself as a "Jew turned Evangelical Christian". As of November 2016, Root described himself as Jewish, and says he considers Donald Trump to be the first Jewish president, in the same sense that Bill Clinton was often called the "first black president".
Career
Root worked for WNBC radio in the early 1980s. From 1989 to 1991, he worked with the Financial News Network before its subsumption into CNBC.Root was founder and chairman of Winning Edge International Inc. In the 2000s, he hosted Wayne Allyn Root's Winning Edge, a television show which promoted Root's sports handicapping operation.
Root co-hosted King of Vegas on Spike TV. He produced Ghost Adventures on the Travel Channel.
Root was a board member of Wealth Masters International, a now-defunct global financial services and education company based in Houston, Texas. In 2010 Norwegian authorities suspended WMI's sales, finding it to be an illegal pyramid scheme. Root was named in the finding.
Politics
Root had been a longtime Republican Party member and supporter who self-identified as a Libertarian Republican. He ran for a seat on the Westchester County Board of Legislators in 1983. In 2007, Root ended his association with the Republican Party and joined the Libertarian Party. Root's book outlining his libertarian views, The Conscience of a Libertarian, was published in 2009.2008 presidential campaign
On May 4, 2007, Root declared his candidacy for the Libertarian Party's 2008 presidential nomination. On May 25, 2008, Root advanced to the fifth ballot of the Libertarian Party presidential nomination vote at the 2008 Libertarian National Convention before being eliminated and endorsing Bob Barr, who became the party's presidential nomination. Root then became the Libertarian Party vice presidential nominee, securing the nod in the third round of voting for that nomination.Though in the same graduating class as Barack Obama at Columbia University, Root has stated on a number of occasions that he has no recollection of having met or seen Obama at Columbia. He has "stopped short" of actually claiming that Obama did not attend Columbia.
In 2010, Root ran for the position of chair of the Libertarian National Committee of the Libertarian Party. He was defeated by Mark Hinkle by a vote of 228–281 in the third round. He subsequently succeeded in being elected to the Libertarian National Committee as an at-large member. At the 2012 Libertarian National Convention, Root again was elected to the Libertarian National Committee as an At-Large Member, despite being seen by some LP members as being part of the "top-down faction." The party's 2012 presidential candidate Gary Johnson endorsed Root.
Return to the Republican Party
In September 2012, Root resigned all Libertarian Party positions, re-joined the Republican Party and endorsed Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election. He predicted Romney would win the election against incumbent President Barack Obama, citing, among other factors, that the "Enthusiasm Factor" for Romney was "huge".Root had announced that he intended to run as a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in Nevada in 2016, for the seat held by retiring Democratic Senator Harry Reid. However, he did not run. He supported Republican nominee Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election.
Root was the opening speaker for Trump's rally in Las Vegas in late October 2016 during the presidential campaign. At the rally, Root, suggested that he wished ill upon Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin, hoping they met the same ending as Thelma & Louise. The lead characters in the film take their own lives by driving off a cliff. In his speech, Root said "Trump warriors" armed with "pitchforks, jack hammers and blow torches" would violently take over Washington D.C.: "We're coming to tear it down. We're coming to rip it up. We're coming to kick your ass. And we're coming to put you in prison", he said referring to a fantasy he had about Clinton and Abedin. Kellyanne Conway, Trump's campaign manager, later told CNN that Root's "conduct is completely unacceptable and does not reflect our campaign or our candidate".
In August 2019, Root praised President Trump. Following Trump's assertion that Jews voting for the Democrats show "either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty", a comment which was rejected by his critics who said he was following an antisemitic canard, Root countered the claim. Root said that "Trump is the greatest President for Jews and for Israel in the history of the world, not just America, he is the best President for Israel in the history of the world...and the Jewish people in Israel love him like he's the King of Israel. They love him like he is the second coming of God." Later, President Donald Trump thanked Root on Twitter for "the very nice words" and shared what was said about him.
In October 2019, while speaking at a pro-Trump conference in Miami, Florida at the Trump National Doral Miami, Root reportedly boasted about a time in his childhood when, as one of the few white students at a predominantly black high school, he knocked one classmate unconscious and shattered another kid's teeth. "My buddies and I were high-fiving and laughing," Root reportedly said during his speech. "Man, it was funny." He reportedly went on to say that "you've got to be a natural-born killer" to win in politics.
Promotion of conspiracy theories and falsehoods
Root is known for spreading conspiracy theories and false information.Root was a leading proponent of the conspiracy theory that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States. Root falsely claimed that Obama was not a student at Columbia University. He later stated in a 2012 interview with Sean Hannity that he believed Obama was a "foreign exchange student" there. He has repeatedly described Obama as a "Marxist, anti-American, anti-Israel, globalist, middle class-hating, Muslim sympathizer". In 2017, he claimed that Obama was gay, called him "Bathhouse Barry" and said that he had info from Obama's "friends in Chicago" about his "sordid past". In 2014, he described Obama as a "Manchurian candidate", possibly hired by the Bilderberg Group to destroy the United States and "kill all of us".
He promoted conspiracy theories around the murder of Seth Rich, and at various times suggested that Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Hillary Clinton, Donna Brazile, Bill Clinton, Eric Schneiderman and John Podesta were involved in the murder.
During the white supremacist Unite the Right rally, Root falsely claimed that blaming white supremacist James Alex Fields Jr. for killing Heather Heyer was "such B.S. Probably paid actors & infiltrators hired by Soros. No conservative I've ever met commits violence. EVER."
On the night of the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, in which 58 people were murdered, Root tweeted: "Clearly coordinated Muslim terror attack." Police later determined only one shooter—a non-religious American—was involved.
Root argued that Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election is motivated by "penis envy", because "Mueller's is smaller than Trump's."
Controversies
Legal problems
On March 19–21, 2020, Chief Health Care Bureau Lisa Landau and New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, ordered Root to stop advertising My Doctor Suggests, LLC on KBET and USA Radio Network citing violations of state laws on deceptive acts and practices.On April 29, 2020, Gordon Pedersen of My Doctor Suggests LLC and GP Silver LLC was ordered by the United States Department of Justice under the Trump administration to permanently stop advertising and selling all of these products out there. A hearing on the government’s request for a preliminary injunction is set for May 12, 2020.