White supremacists could be wild card for Trump in general election

[TomCADem]

Calling Mexican immigrants rapists and murderers, opposing Tubman on the $20, proposing building the wall and banning all Muslims, suggesting that President Obama was born in Kenya, you have to wonder why white supremacists seem to be gravitating to Donald Trump.

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/white-supremacists-could-be-wild-card-trump-general-election

As Donald Trump makes the transition from GOP front-runner to likely presidential nominee, there will inevitably be more scrutiny on his past statements and policy proposals – including the candidate’s history of racially insensitive rhetoric and propensity to draw white supremacist support, a fact that has largely flown under the radar as his dominance of the GOP field has overshadowed many unsavory headlines. But a recent NBC affiliate interview with a purported “imperial wizard” in the Ku Klux Klan from Virginia who praised the real estate mogul as the “best for the job” has resurrected concerns about the kinds of supporters Trump’s candidacy attracts.

“The reason a lot of Klan members like Donald Trump is because a lot of what he believes, we believe in,” the unidentified white supremacist told WWBT anchor Chris Thomas. Prior to this alleged KKK figure’s endorsement, there have been robocalls in favor of Trump by individuals identifying as white nationalists, members of supremacist organizations have attended and even broadcast from the GOP front-runner’s rallies (one was even caught on camera shoving a black protester), and the candidate himself has retweeted comments from apparent white supremacists on multiple occasions.

Trump has also shared debunked statistics claiming 81 percent of white murder victims are killed by black assailants. When confronted about the inaccuracy of the data, Trump didn’t apologize, saying it came from sources that were “very credible.” It turns out the graphic he retweeted originated on a neo-Nazi website.

When David Duke, arguably the most famous figure associated with white supremacist ideology, encouraged listeners of his radio show to vote for Trump, the candidate publicly disavowed him, after initially claiming to not know who he was. However, Trump has not been asked to account for the fact that despite his repeated insistence that he does not condone their ideology, white nationalists seem to keep gravitating towards his campaign. For example, on Wednesday, the supremacist website The Daily Stormer posted a video parody of the movie “300” portraying Trump as a hero “leading an army of the white race against the barbarian hordes” and Duke continued to praise Trump on his radio program, this time for exposing the “Jewish supremacists who control our country.”