At the end of an era of rebooting the Trump administration, they are already rooting for a deep bag of fringe characters. According to a report from The BulwarkD-list conservative media personality and alleged Russian propagandist Lauren Chen seems to have been granted a visa by Trump’s State Department and has returned to the United States.

In a post on X on Christmas Day, Chen announced that she and her husband were in Nashville and thanked the State Department’s Joe Rittenhouse, a senior adviser for consular affairs, for making it happen, saying he helped “move mountains to make sure we get back in time for the holidays!” Chen also offered thanks to “CBP, the new FBI leadership, and the administration” for helping him return.

The whole situation is a bit of a “Who’s Who” of “Who is that again?” So, as a refresher: Lauren Chen is a longtime conservative media commentator who made it “big” playing footsie with the alt-right during the first Trump administration while posting as a “Roaming Millennial.” He gained attention for interviewing white supremacist Richard Spencer before his participation in the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, which resulted in the death of one counter-protester and the injury of several others after a The neo-Nazi drove their car into a crowd of people.

After a series of unsuccessful independent media ventures, he settled in the right-wing ecosystem, becoming a contributor to Glenn Beck’s The Blaze and Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA. But in 2022, she and her husband, Liam Donovan, launched her most famous business, Tenent Media.

According to an indictment filed by the Justice Department in 2024, Tenet Media received millions of dollars from the Kremlin-run media company RT, which Chen once contributed to, and passed the money to conservative commentators in an effort to spread pro-Russian content. The recipients of those fundswho allegedly did not know they came from Russian interests, include online influencers Benny Johnson, Tim Pool, and David Rubin, all of whom were allegedly paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by Tenent Media for their CONTENTS.

While the Justice Department’s case against Tenet Media’s Russian financiers is still open, per The BulwarkChen never faced legal consequences—even though he had his visa “nuked” in the Biden administration and, at least for a time, cannot return to the United States.

That appears to have changed thanks to another Trump Show backbencher, Joe Rittenhouse. According to The Daily BeastRittenhouse is a former actor turned Trump campaign booster who was rewarded with a role in the administration and apparently used his position to get Chen back in the country. Rittenhouse is very visible to join the Online Right, based on the fact that he posted a picture of himself in a federal office watching the Sargon of Akkad video. So it’s probably no surprise that he knows and wants to help Chen. The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Gizmodo; We will update this post when we receive a response.

Fittingly, so was Rittenhouse informed the press of the Trump administration’s decision to student visas will be revoked who participated in the anti-genocide protests that took place on college campuses earlier this year. So if you’re keeping score at home: Protesting a genocide gets you kicked out of this country, but accepting money from the Kremlin and distributing it to produce propaganda gets you an easy invitation. Like Rittenhouse Statesthat’s just what “American First Consular Affairs” looks like.