Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump selected the head of a white nationalist group to be a delegate of his in California, Mother Jones reported.
Advertisement
But when the Daily News pointed out that Johnson was indeed listed on the California Secretary of State’s website as a delegate, Hicks said he had been included because of a “database error”, though she did not immediately clarify whether she was blaming an internal campaign error or the California Secretary of State’s office.
In February, Trump said he would return a 0 donation that Johnson had made to the campaign.
Johnson, for his part, did apply for the delegate slot, sending his name to the Trump campaign, which accepted and asked Johnson to file a pledge that read, “I, William Johnson, endorse Donald J. Trump for the office of President of the United States”.
Johnson is the leader of the American Freedom Party, which describes itself as a “nationalist party that shares the customs and heritage of the European American people”.
A Los Angeles attorney who leads a political party that advocates white separatism is on Donald Trump’s list of Republican convention delegates, records show.
“Yesterday the Trump campaign submitted its list of California delegates to be certified by the Secretary of State of California”, the camp said in a statement this afternoon.
The California primary is scheduled for June 7. “This call is not authorized by Donald Trump”.
Riverside County Supervisor Marion Ashley is a Trump delegate in the 42 Congressional District, which is represented by Republican Ken Calvert and includes Corona, Norco, Murrieta, Menifee and Lake Elsinore. In press releases announcing the robocall campaign, the PAC referred to Trump as America’s “Great White Hope”.
In 2010, Johnson said in an interview with the nationalist The Political Cesspool radio show that “The initial basis of our own upstart organization is the racial nationalist movement”. He told Harkinson he didn’t identify himself as a “white nationalist” in his application to be a delegate, but “disclosed multiple details about his background and activism”.
Advertisement
Trump, who has often been criticized for his controversial statements about Mexicans and a call to temporarily deny Muslims access to the country, ran into trouble earlier in his campaign when he was slow to disavow an endorsement from David Duke, the former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. “I thought people wouldn’t notice, and if they did notice I didn’t think it would be a big deal”. Johnson has been widely recognized as the public face of white nationalist Trump support.
