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Meet Donald Trump's basket of deplorables.
According to an investigation by Mother Jones and the Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute, since Trump officially announced his bid in June 2015 he has drawn effusive praise and formal backing from some of the country's most virulent neo-Nazis, white supremacists, militia supporters, and other extremist leaders. They include the head of the American Nazi Party, three former Ku Klux Klansmen, four people involved in a recent armed standoff against federal authorities at an Oregon wildlife refuge, and at least 15 individuals affiliated with organizations described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as hate groups.
Trump has largely locked up the white supremacist vote. In fact, the heads of white supremacist and white nationalist sites Stormfront, Vanguard News Network, VDARE, and other cesspools are all backing Trump as angry pumpkin overlord. And it's not just that they're supporting him: In Trump, they see a new opening for their worldview that didn't exist until he came along.
"We have a wonderful OPPORTUNITY here folks, that may never come again," wrote Rocky J. Suhayda, the head of the American Nazi Party, last fall. "Donald Trump's campaign statements, if nothing else, have SHOWN that 'our views' are NOT so 'unpopular' as the Political Correctness crowd have told everyone they are!" [...]
"Our message is more visible than ever before," Griffin wrote on his website. "It's also all due to Trump's presidential run…Can you imagine a world in which White Nationalists have come out of the closet, the charge of 'racism' elicits only a 'meh' and shrugged shoulders, and we have begun to openly organize?"
Donald Trump has denounced none of these ultra-radical supporters—and that is especially odd considering he has darn good connections to at least one of them, now-convicted Bundy Ranch standoff participant Gerald DeLemus, New Hampshire "Veterans for Trump" co-chair. It doesn't matter much, though. The groups like him because, as they say, he trumpets their causes. His “campaign statements” mainstream their own goals which include mass deportations, barring certain immigrant groups outright, and the institution of religious tests for entry into the country.
And he locked up the vote of the Republican Party base using the same stances. The punditry is being excruciatingly careful not to ponder the obvious implications of that, because it's not a pleasant thing to talk about.
But here we are.
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