Anton was a speechwriter and press secretary for New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. He later took a mid-level job at the United States National Security Council (NSC) in the administration of President George W. Bush. He worked as the press secretary of National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. In 2005, Anton left the U.S. government and became a speechwriter for Rupert Murdoch at News Corp. He then worked for several years in thr communications shop as director of communications at the investment bankCitigroup, and a year and a half as managing director of investing firm BlackRock.[5][6][7]
Anton joined the U.S. National Security Council as Deputy Assistant to the President for Strategic Communications in February 2017.[8] He resigned on April 8, 2018, the evening before John R. Bolton became Trump's National Security Advisor.[9][10][11][12][13]
Anton joined Hillsdale College's Kirby Center Graduate School of Government in Washington, D.C., after leaving the Trump administration.[14]
According to The Washington Post in November 2024, Anton was a leading candidate to be deputy national security advisor under President-elect Donald Trump's second term, but removed himself from consideration after learning the National Security Council would include a position for Sebastian Gorka.[17] In December 2024, President-elect Trump nominated Anton to serve as the Director of Policy Planning at the US State Department.[18]
Anton has derided American diversity in his writing, arguing in a pseudonymous March 2016 essay that "'Diversity' is not 'our strength'; it's a source of weakness, tension and disunion."[21] In the same essay, written under the pseudonym Publius Decius Mus (after the ancient Roman consul), Anton defended Donald Trump's use of the slogan "America First" by arguing that the America First Committee (which included prominent antisemites and opposed the United States entering World War II) had been "unfairly maligned."[22] He also argued that Islam "is a militant faith", and that "only an insane society" would take in Muslim immigrants after the 9/11 attacks.[23]
In Anton's 2019 book After the Flight 93 Election: The Vote that Saved America and What We Still Have to Lose, he argued that Trump constituted "the first serious national-political defense of the Constitution in a generation."[31] Trump praised the book.[31]
According to Carlos Lozada, book critic for The Washington Post, Anton's book primarily reprints text from his 2016 editorial, but with a newly added rumination of how dangerous the American left is.[31] Lozada wrote, "Anton spends virtually no time detailing or defending particular policies of the Trump administration; all that matters is the enemy. For Anton, Hillary Clinton is no longer the chief nemesis—the entire left is, along with sellout conservatives and any other forces countering the president. They contribute to a 'spiritual sickness' and 'existential despair' pervading not just the United States but all the West ... Apparently, Flight 93 did not end with the 2016 vote; we are forever on the plane, endlessly in danger, no matter who has seized the controls."[31]
In September 2020, Anton wrote a conspiratorial essay titled "The Coming Coup?" in The American Mind; in the essay, Anton suggested that Democrats, aided by George Soros, were planning a coup d'etat to take over the United States[22][36] by way of a domestic color revolution coordinated by the so-called Deep State and influential operatives of the Democratic Party.[37] The widely shared article was called a tipping point in spreading the false claim, which was further popularized by The Federalist, DJHJ Media and Dan Bongino.[36] On Taiwan, Anton has referred to U.S. policy as a "Cold War relic" and that it is not in the interest of the U.S. to defend it.[38]
Personal life
Anton is a classically trained chef. After resigning from the National Security Council in 2018, he came back to the White House for a day to work as a line cook in the kitchen, helping prepare a state dinner for President Emmanuel Macron of France.[39] He is also an aesthete with a penchant for tailoring and classic menswear, having authored a short book and over 40,000 posts on internet bulletin board Styleforum.net on the subject.[40][41]
Under the pseudonym "Nicholas Antongiavanni", Anton wrote The Suit, a 2006 men's fashion guide book, which is a parody of Niccolò Machiavelli's The Prince.[42]
Books
Antongiavanni, Nicholas (2006). The Suit: A Machiavellian Approach to Men's Style. New York: HarperCollins. ISBN9780060891862.
After the Flight 93 Election: The Vote that Saved America and What We Still Have to Lose. Encounter Books. 2019. ISBN9781641770606.
^ abMaas, Peter (February 12, 2017). "Dark Essays by White House Staffer Are the Intellectual Source Code of Trumpism". The Intercept. Archived from the original on March 7, 2017. Retrieved March 7, 2017. In the beginning, Anton attended Claremont Graduate University, an incubator for conservative thinkers. He became a speechwriter and press secretary for New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, then took a mid-level job at the NSC in the George W. Bush administration. As the Weekly Standard reported, he was part of the team that pushed for the disastrous invasion of Iraq. Anton left the government in 2005 and became a speechwriter for Rupert Murdoch at News Corp., followed by several years in the communications shop at Citigroup, then a year and a half as a managing director at BlackRock, the asset management firm.
^Leonhardt, David (February 3, 2017). "The Unmasking of a Trumpist". The New York Times. Archived from the original on October 1, 2020. Retrieved June 10, 2021.
^Anton, Michael (September 5, 2016). "The Flight 93 Election". Claremont Review of Books. Upland, California, US: Claremont Institute. Archived from the original on November 7, 2021. Retrieved February 23, 2021.
^"The Dandy". Humanities: The Magazine for the National Endowment for the Humanities. March–April 2008. Archived from the original on May 14, 2017. Retrieved May 19, 2017.
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