The news that Donald Trump's campaign had tapped the leader of one of the most prominent white nationalist groups in the nation to be one of its California delegates was dismissed yesterday by the Trump camp as a "database error." Surely, countless campaigns have faced this problem and can attest to how hard it can be to purge all the white supremacists from your campaign databases—they tend to scurry up into the cracks and corners and you have to poke at them with a broom to dislodge them, and as like as not that just makes them fall into some other spreadsheet, anything from Office Birthdays to Potential Vice President Picks.
It must have been one persistent database error, in this case, because the very day before Mother Jones published its story William Johnson was not just still in the database, but was getting helpful advice from Trump's delegate managers on how to complete the process.
Although the Trump campaign blamed a "database error" for including Johnson as a delegate, the campaign corresponded with him personally just over 24 hours ago. Trump's California delegate coordinator, Katie Lagomarsino, sent Johnson a congratulatory email on Monday, and when he asked for clarification about how to send his completed pledge form back to the campaign, she replied.
Looks like the infestation is pretty bad. You may need to reformat your campaign.
While Johnson says he'll resign if the campaign asks him to, the ABC journalist who profiled Johnson in March for a piece on Trump-supporting white nationalists (because that is a thing this year) notes that the deadline has passed for removing him as a delegate. So ... oops?
There you go. Oh yes, we can all have great confidence that Donald J. Trump will bring some much-needed basic competence to American governance. You can just smell the genius wafting from his offices.