Speaking before a concerned crowd today, her comments on his beliefs were shocking.
“It appears that his belief in the Illuminati, the Freemasons, and lizard people is sincere and escalating,” she said.
Actually, that was a federal judge discussing the beliefs of a Chicago man ruled unfit to stand trial for mental illness. However, those beliefs seem relatively tame next to this.
“Oh God, they had tanks, people with gills, little babies gulping clawing at the sides. You see a turtle at the zoo and you feel for it … they got humanoids crossed with fish. I mean, we are screwed, people.”
That declaration of fish-people doom is from Alex Jones, one loony wing of the alt right that’s been supported by Donald Trump. Trump’s visit to Jones’ show got a call out when Hillary Clinton spoke today on Donald Trump’s decision to plant his gold-plated freak flag deep into the land of alt-right.
It’s what happens when you listen to the radio host Alex Jones, who claims that 9/11 and the Oklahoma City bombings were inside jobs. He said the victims of the Sandy Hook massacre were child actors and no one was actually killed there.
Trump didn’t challenge those lies. He went on Jones’ show and said: “Your reputation is amazing. I will not let you down.”
This man wants to be President of the United States.
If the worst thing about Donald Trump’s embrace of Alex Jones, Breitbart, and the rest of the alt-right was a fear of fish people, the whole thing would be simply laughable. But even spreading conspiracy theories about 9/11 and Sandy Hook is only a sideline. The base of support for all these organizations—Jones, Breitbart, and Trump—is a fervent group of white nationalists. And that’s terrifying.
Much of Hillary Clinton’s speech was simply an exercise in introducing the alt-right to an America that may have been blessedly unaware of this fungus growing in the deepest shadows of our politics.
Alt-Right is short for “Alternative Right.”
The Wall Street Journal describes it as a loosely organized movement, mostly online, that “rejects mainstream conservatism, promotes nationalism and views immigration and multiculturalism as threats to white identity.”
Hillary Clinton was very clear about how Trump has wed his campaign to these forces.
It’s like nothing we’ve heard before from a nominee for President of the United States.
From the start, Donald Trump has built his campaign on prejudice and paranoia.
He’s taking hate groups mainstream and helping a radical fringe take over one of America’s two major political parties.
His disregard for the values that make our country great is profoundly dangerous.
And she took the time to differentiate Trump’s position from Republicans of the past, going out of her way to find incidents in which Republican candidates showed decency and honesty — a sharp contrast with Trump. It was a move that both opens the door to Republicans moving toward Hillary, and reinforces the gap between Trump and Republicans who haven’t already crawled into the alt-right litter box.
Clinton’s speech was more of an introduction to the racism and nationalism that’s at the foundation of Trump’s campaign. It was a definitional speech, a primer for those who don’t regularly see the Drudge red-light or run up against Breitbart’s contrived racist conspiracies. As such, you can expect it to become a launching point for more discussion of not just the craziness of the new right, but incidents in Trump’s past.
And there are plenty.
“I think that the guy is lazy. And it’s probably not his fault because laziness is a trait in blacks. It really is; I believe that. It’s not anything they can control.” — Donald Trump