Photo: AP

Today, Tim Clark and Ron Nehring run Donald Trump and Ted Cruz’s California presidential campaigns, respectively. But four years ago, the Guardian reports, the two men spent six weeks in Guatemala as paid advisors to Manuel Baldízon, a multimillionaire rightwing populist who promised to broadcast executions on television and lead the Guatemalan national soccer team to the World Cup.

Clark, Trump’s state director in California, said that Nehring had the contract with Baldízon, and invited him down to help out on the campaign. “We had bodyguards. We had translators. We drove around in a black SUV full of semi-automatic machine guns in the back,” he said. “Glad I came out alive.”

On his website, Nehring boasts his experience working with “government officials and candidates in regions including Bosnia, Serbia, Morocco, Egypt, Guatemala, and Iraq.”

Clark said the pair were paid to advise Baldízon about “business interests.” Just last week, the business tycoon, who refuses to identify his campaign donors, was accused of skimming $10 million in public funds off government works contracts. From the Guardian:

Clark said he and Nehring met with Baldízon and advised his campaign, traveling the country with him and attending rallies. But Clark said they were “a step removed” because their work was paid for by corporate interests and they were not formally part of the campaign.

“In many ways it felt like you were the shiny object in the room: ‘Oh, the American strategists are here’. But Ron did a really good job of helping set him [Baldízon] on message, I felt,” he said.

While Nehring took care of political messaging around free-market issues, Clark said, his role was “to assist Ron, to run the metrics, to look at it, to see where and what and how”.

Later, in an email, Clark wrote, “I am unaware of his platform regarding public safety.”