A New Racist Emerges on the National Scene – Was He a Trump Campaign Supporter?

Not the Most Difficult Question

Hatred is Injected in the Virginia Republican Primary

The Trump apologists were dealt a heavy blow this week when news emerged about his former Virginia campaign head essentially agreeing with a vicious white supremacist who took his hatred to Charlottesville.  Here is what Richard Spencer, the proponent of Confederate value stands for.

Once an obscure Internet figure promoting white identity, Spencer rose to prominence during Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. He coined the term “alt-right” — referring to a small, far-right movement that seeks a whites-only state. Trump denounced the alt-right, but Spencer’s followers have counted his victory as a win for the movement as Trump espoused hard-right stances on undocumented immigrants, Muslims and political correctness.

Spencer’s protests in Charlottesville have resulted in a spate of anti-Semitic attacks on that city’s mayor.

Signer, a Jewish author and lawyer who became mayor in January 2016, soon drew a hail of racist and anti-Semitic assaults on Twitter. They began Sunday and kept coming Monday.

“I smell Jew,” one message said. “If so, you are going back to Israel. But you will not stay in power here. Not for long.”

A Republican primary for Governor is coming up.  One candidate, Corey Stewart,  is exploiting hatred.

Corey A. Stewart, one of three Republican gubernatorial contenders, made the preservation of the state’s Confederate memorials a rallying cry for his campaign. There is no indication that he attended the rallies. But unlike the two other Republicans and two Democrats in the race — all of whom condemned Spencer’s explicitly racial appeals — Stewart did not comment as the events made national news.

“Only a jerk would talk politics on Mother’s Day,” Stewart tweeted Sunday — although earlier in the day, he had tweeted about his plans to cut taxes and create jobs.

Gillespie, the front-runner in the GOP primary race, chided Stewart for his silence on the “ugly display of hateful rhetoric and intimidation tactics.”

In a blurry, live Facebook video on Monday evening, Stewart denounced a laundry list of targets: “fake news like The Washington Post”; “weak establishment Republicans” like his chief GOP rival, Ed Gillespie; his Democratic rivals, for not condemning their party’s “long history of racism”; sanctuary cities; “corporate monopolies like Dominion Virginia Power”; and Charlottesville City Councilman Wes Bellamy, who stepped down from the Virginia Board of Education over a series of tweets he made between 2009 and 2014 that included gay slurs, references to sexual assault and anti-white comments. Stewart made no mention of Spencer.

And notice this about Stewart.

Stewart has also held several rallies at the Lee statue and elsewhere, criticizing the planned removal as “historical vandalism” and unfurling the Confederate flag at several events. He is chairman of the Prince William Board of County Supervisors and was chairman of Trump’s Virginia campaign until he was fired in October for participating in a protest “establishment pukes” at the Republican National Committee headquarters.

Yep, not fired because of his racist pro Confederate views, fired because he protested the RNC.

Supporting Confederate racism is not a problem for Trump Republicans.