Update (10/13/23): Smith spoke at Trump’s Miami resort today and received an enthusiastic defense from Clay Clark, the tour’s organizer and a “dear friend” of Eric Trump. Clark said: “Our next presenter is a victim of a lot of hit pieces in the last 24 hours. … I called him last night and I said, ‘The media's coming after you.’ I'm super excited to have him on the stage. And the reason why the media comes after this guy is because he unapologetically celebrates what it means to be an American. He loves our country.”

Trump National Doral Miami is scheduled to host a ReAwaken America tour event featuring Eric Trump, Lara Trump, Trump lawyer Alina Habba, and antisemitic fitness influencer Ian Smith this week. Smith has recommended neo-Nazi and pro-Hitler propaganda, shared social media posts denying the Holocaust, suggested the “good guys” didn’t win World War II, and complained that Jewish people are behind “all of these things that are used to control us” and that more people aren’t questioning why “everybody that” President Joe Biden “surrounds himself with is Jewish.” 

This is at least the fourth Hitler-promoting antisemite who has appeared on the ReAwaken tour with Eric Trump. Smith also spoke at a Trump Doral event in May that featured the former president’s son and other Trump allies. He met former President Donald Trump last year. 

Smith gained fame during the pandemic for defying COVID-19 lockdown orders in order to keep his gym open in New Jersey. Smith then ran for Congress but lost (Fox News host Pete Hegseth donated to his campaign). In 2007, he killed someone while driving drunk. In 2022, he was arrested for driving under the influence; that charge was dropped and Smith instead pled guilty over his “refusal to take a breathalyzer test and careless driving.” 

He has been a guest on Fox News, Newsmax, One America News, among other right-wing outlets. 

Smith is a “featured” speaker on the ReAwaken America tour and has spoken at numerous events, including at Trump National Doral in Miami. He said in an August interview that audience members had given him money in response to his gym being temporarily shut down and he’s “been to every single ReAwaken tour since, minus two.” 

The tour will stop at Trump Doral on October 13 and 14. A video promoting the tour about its “schedule of events” stated that Smith would speak on October 13 in the afternoon. Other speakers, according to the video, include: Eric and Lara Trump; Trump lawyers Alina Habba and Christina Bobb; Trump ally Roger Stone; and former Trump administration officials Mike Flynn (who, along with Clay Clark, co-founded the tour), Kash Patel and Peter Navarro; and Arizona state Sen. Wendy Rogers. Conspiracy theorists Lara Logan, Laura Loomer, and Mike Lindell, among others, are also scheduled to speak. 

As Media Matters has documented, the tour has previously hosted antisemitic commentators Scott McKay, Charlie Ward, and Jason Dean. Like Smith, all three have appeared at stops along with Eric Trump. And all three were dropped after Media Matters reported on their antisemitism and promotions of Hitler. (Eric Trump has publicly responded by threatening to sue MSNBC host Rachel Maddow for reporting on the issue; Trump ally Alan Dershowitz, however, criticized the tour for hosting antisemites.) 

Smith posts Holocaust denial memes. On September 14, Smith engaged in Holocaust denial by posting a video featuring a meme with supposed math that attempts to cast doubt on the number of people killed in the Holocaust. (As the the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum states, “Nazi Germany committed mass murder on an unprecedented scale. The Nazis and their allies and collaborators killed six million Jewish people.”)

He liked Holocaust-denying responses like these: 

On September 27, he posted a similar meme doubting the Holocaust: 

Smith defended Nazis as “protecting their sovereignty” from “1938-45.” Smith shared a copy-and-pasted list of places from which Jewish people were allegedly expelled and wrote: “Are we supposed to believe all of these people in 109 different sovereign nations throughout the last 2300 years were anti-Semitic and not protecting their sovereignty?” (Antisemites have used that list of places to attack Jewish people.) 

Smith said that World War II was “engineered White genocide facilitated by international usurers who needed gut the White world from the inside to keep up their parasitic lifestyle.” He wrote in July: “Let’s stop pretending that World War I and II were some heroic tales of the Allies saving the world from the boogeyman and call them what they really were - engineered White genocide facilitated by international usurers who needed gut the White world from the inside to keep up their parasitic lifestyle.” 

Smith has endorsed the World War II revisionist film Europa: The Last Battle. On May 30, he wrote in response to a meme about the Rothschilds: “Watch the documentary Europa: The last battle and you’ll have no more questions.” 

The ADL has written of the pro-Hitler film: “Europa The Last Battle is an antisemitic, World War II revisionist film released in 2017 that claims Jews deliberately caused both World Wars--and that Hitler was only trying to save Germany from the Jews--as part of a plot to found the nation of Israel. The film is popular with white supremacists and antisemites, who often use it to recruit new individuals into their hateful ideology.” 

Smith suggested the “good guys” didn’t win World War II. He wrote in August: “If the good guys won World War 1 and 2, then why is the world being ruled by a bunch of self-appointed Bolshevik organizations like WHO, UN, WEF?” 

Smith has repeatedly complained that people focus too much on Hitler. He wrote in July: “Without calling me an anti-Semite, explain why history says that Hitler and the Nazis were the most evil force of modern time when the Bolshevik’s and Commie offspring killed incomparably more people, were objectively more brutal, and have a track record of promoting degeneracy. … So again, I ask the simple question - without calling me a Nazi, anti-Semite, whatever. Why has history classified the Nazis worse than the bolsheviks and communists, when there is no close comparison to the horrors that the second one has brought upon the Earth?” 

He also wrote: “Much of what we have been told about the Nazi’s is the direct result of Bolshevik influence.”

Smith likes pro-Hitler posts. On September 17, Smith wrote: “How come they never put subtitles on Hitler's speeches?” His post received antisemitic replies, including pro-Hitler comments that he liked:

Smith responded to a meme about the “enemy” with a symbol used to indicate Jewish people. The American Jewish Committee wrote that “the (((echo))) is part of the coded antisemitism that occurs online. Used by antisemites, neo-Nazis, and white nationalists, the triple parentheses are applied to Jewish names or topics to identify, mock, and harass Jews.” Smith responded to a meme about the “enemy” with triple parentheses. 

Smith also wrote: “The debt ceiling argument is two groups of criminals arguing how much more of your money they will take by force and send to their (((banker)))) masters.” 

Smith shared a meme stating that “all this woke stuff” is “coming from Jews.” 

Smith alleged that Jewish people are behind “all of these things that are used to control us,” including banking, the media, pornography, and Hollywood. He also said that “everybody that he [Biden] surrounds himself with is Jewish.” During a July 25 appearance on a Rumble program, Smith agreed that Jewish people are behind “all of these things that are used to control us,” including “the Federal Reserve system, the whole concept of usury,” the media, entertainment, “pornography, the transgender movement,” and critical race theory. He then complained that people don’t sufficiently question why “everybody that” Biden “surrounds himself with is Jewish.”

He also wrote in July: “When there is a large percentage of white people in the government, owning businesses, attending colleges, and accumulating wealth it’s called oppression. When it’s a wildly disproportionate amount of Jewish in those positions and accumulating wealth it’s called high-achievement. Anyone else find that weird?” 

Smith apparently encouraged followers to look up the neo-Nazi “Kalergi Plan” conspiracy theory. Smith wrote on X: “If there isn't a war on White people, then why are the only countries that are being forced to accept inclusion and diversity White Western counties? Show me a non-white country that has migrants being shoved down their throats. Bonus question: what is the Kalgeri plan and who is behind it?” 

Of the Kalergi Plan, the ADL writes, “The Kalergi Plan is an antisemitic conspiracy theory about ostensible white genocide originated by Austrian neo-Nazi Gerd Honsik. ‘Kalergi’ refers to Richard Nikolaus Graf von Coudenhove-Kalergi, an Austrian philosopher and politician of mixed European and Japanese background who believed that racial integration was a critical part of Europe's future. Kalergi's work did not receive much attention until 2005, when Honsik took Kalergi's words out of context, asserting that Kalergi proclaimed Europe would be dominated by Jews and that his ultimate goal was the programmed genocide of European peoples through mass immigration.” 

Update (10/16/23): This piece has also been updated to include more research about Smith.