As I exposed yesterday, since Monday the Liberty Roundtable radio show has been broadcasting live from the Republican National Convention. For two days out of the four, Political Cesspool radio show James Edwards has joined LRT host Sam Bushman during the broadcasts.
Yesterday, as noted by TalkingPointsMemo’s Sara Jerde, LRT host Bushman interviewed Trump’s veterans affairs adviser Al Baldasaro, a New Hampshire state representative who suggested Hillary Clinton should be executed for treason. Bushman tried to walk it back, making clear he did not endorse Baldasaro’s position. According to TPM, the Secret Service has been investigating the matter.
Today, in the first one-hour segment of the show, James Edwards and Sam Bushman interviewed Utah U.S. Congressman Rob Bishop, including on the subject of whether Hillary Clinton had committed email-related crimes that could be prosecuted.
(segment 1 — lnrlive.com/… segment 2 — lnrlive.com/…)
There are several truly astounding issues here:
First, the Trump campaign almost certainly knew exactly who James Edwards and Sam Bushman were when they granted the two press credentials for the convention.
Second (I’ll return to this after covering point #1), mainstream media has almost completely ignored the presence of Edwards and Bushman despite their national profiles as hosts of two of the most influential white nationalist (Bushman) and white supremacist (Edwards) radio shows in America.
Last March 1st, Donald Trump, Jr. appeared for an extended interview on Liberty Roundtable with hosts Sam Bushman and guest co-host James Edwards (link to Southern Poverty Law Center report on Edwards) to whom the Trump campaign had previously granted VIP press credentials so Edwards could broadcast his white supremacist Political Cesspool radio show from inside a Memphis Trump rally.
There was considerable media notice of Trump, Jr.’s appearance on the radio show, and Donald Trump, Jr. made the claim that he had been ambushed by Edwards appearance in the radio interview.
James Edwards has repeatedly disputed Trump, Jr.’s claim to have been unaware Edwards would be present during the interview.
But regardless of who is telling the truth, it is fair to say that because of the controversy, the Trump campaign knows exactly who James Edwards and Sam Bushman are.
Edwards is a close personal friend and protege of former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke and calls League of the South founder and president Michael Hill, who has appeared numerous times on Edwards’ radio show, “one of my favorite people”.
At a recent League of the South meeting Hill issued a call for white Southerners to unite and drive their enemies “into the sea”.
In a November 2015 post at the Liberty Roundtable website, Edwards described a vast conspiracy involving Jews that had “the stated and apparent agenda to reduce not only the influence of White Christians, but also the numbers of White Christians — via our genocide.”
Edwards is arguably one of the rising stars among a new generation of young public relations-savvy white supremacist leaders in America, and his Political Cesspool radio show is, according to the SPLC “tailored for a Southern, neo-Confederate, white nationalist audience”.
The show’s mission statement supports the right of secession and includes, “Since family is the foundation of any strong society, we reject abortion, feminism, and homosexuality” and declares,
“America would not be a prosperous land of opportunity if the founding stock were not Europeans. Therefore, we advocate for an America First immigration policy.”
Among his leadership roles, James Edwards is one of six directors of the virulently racist American Freedom Party, which in 2016 broadcast in several US states automated robocalls warning citizens of an ongoing “genocide” being perpetrated against white Americans and urging them to vote for Donald Trump.
Edwards is also a board member of the crudely racist Council of Conservative Citizens, whose website material has been widely credited with inspiring Dylan Roof, who is accused of having executed nine members of a Charleston, South Carolina church prayer group.
Despite the national profile of Edwards and Bushman, and despite the fact that the two are situated, by their description, at the very center of the media area at the RNC, mainstream media has refused to discuss their presence.
Indeed, one Daily Beast correspondent, James Kirchick even went on their radio how for an extended interview with Sam Bushman.
This was notable because in 2008, writing for the New Republic, journalist Jamie Kirchick had labeled Edwards’ Political Cesspool a “neo-Nazi radio show”.
Bushman and Edwards quite frequently co-host each others’ shows and Edwards’ show is broadcast on Bushman’s radio network, so that the are in effect part of the same symbiotic project, though its worth noting that Sam Bushman’s show lacks the extreme racial animosity of James Edwards’ Political Cesspool show.
The bottom line here is this — mainstream media has utterly failed (with the shining exception of quasi-mainstream TalkingPointsMemo) to inform the public of how the Trump campaign and the RNC are helping mainstream and validate hate radio.
This is not Rush Limbaugh. It’s worse. And the media have been complicit.