August 30, 2016

Trump’s Professed Ignorance Of The Alt-Right Fits His Know-Nothing Pattern

https://thinkprogress.org/trump-alt-right-ignorance-7d4b39835e4d#.viwn1c4ih
"Clinton, in her speech, calmly walked through the extensive list of Trump’s ties and overtures to the movement. “This is someone who retweets white supremacists online, like the user who goes by the name ‘white-genocide-TM,’” she said, referencing a blatantly white supremacist Twitter account Trump has retweeted during the campaign. “Trump took this fringe bigot with a few dozen followers and spread his message to 11 million people.” It was 37 minutes of example after example of how Trump has clearly courted and emboldened the movement; in all, a devastating attack. Since then, leaders of the Republican party have been conspicuously silent. The alt-right, meanwhile, is rejoicing over the media coverage. American Renaissance, another flagship group of the movement, responded in a press release that only emphasized the alt-right’s white-nationalist premise. Trump, however, trotted out his usual defense — ignorance. On CNN, Anderson Cooper asked Trump point-blank if he was embracing the alt-right. “I don’t even know — nobody even knows what it is,” Trump said. Cooper responded by pointing out that Stephen Bannon, the former Breitbart News boss who Trump recently appointed as his new campaign CEO, has boasted about his site’s ties to the alt-right."