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Australia Today

This Australian Open Quarter Finalist Sure Does Believe in Pizzagate

26-year-old American player Tennys Sandgren has been forced to scrub his Twitter account, which revealed multiple links to the alt-right.
Tennys Sandgren at a press conference today. Screenshot via ABC News

So first of all, there’s a guy playing in the Australian Open whose name is literally Tennys. Before you get too excited, it kind of maybe seems like he’s a bit of an alt-right sympathiser. Tennys Sandgren, a 26-year-old American player who is currently ranked world number 97 but has managed to reach the quarter finals of the Open anyway, has quite the Twitter presence.

Or at least he did have quite the Twitter presence, until multiple tweets were deleted from his account following an awkward press conference earlier today during which a savvy reporter caught him unawares following a surprise victory over world number 5 player Dominic Thiem. Sandgren was questioned about a series of distinctly pizzagate-related sentiments he’d expressed online over the past year.

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In one now-deleted tweet, Sandgren described Hillary Clinton’s supposed links to a paedophile ring cover-up as “sickening”, saying “the collective evidence” of her involvement in one of the 2016 election’s most bizarre conspiracy theories was “too much to ignore”.

On January 14, he retweeted a video by white supremacist Nicholas Fuentes, who was present at last year’s Charlottesville rally. Sandgren’s account also follows other far-right figures like Tommy Robinson and Dan Roodt. Back in September 2016, the tennis player took to Twitter to deny that systemic racism exists in the United States, saying that “I just don’t know how a country that practices a systematic racism elected a black pres, twice."

When asked by the reporter whether he supported at least “some” of the alt right movement, however, Sandgren denied it all.

“No, I don’t. I find some of the content interesting, but no I don’t,” he said. “Not at all. No, as a firm Christian, I don’t support things like that, no. I support Christ and following him and that’s what I support.”

“Interesting”?

Interesting????

For some reason, the questions ended there.

Sandgren’s account has now been thoroughly scrubbed; at time of writing, its most recent tweet was posted on June 24, 2016. It, um, endorsed Brexit.