In a report during MSNBC’s 1:00 p.m. ET hour on Thursday, correspondent Morgan Radford interviewed a handful of fringe white supremacist candidates running for office in 2018 midterm races, touting “many of them running on the Republican ticket” and claiming that “President Trump is talking to people” like them.
After Radford highlighted a congressional candidate in Chicago who “was a member of the American Nazi Party who denies the Holocaust ever happened” and a California senate candidate who ranted about the “monstrous nature of the Jewish people,” anchor Craig Melvin turned to MSNBC political analyst and former Hillary Clinton campaign aide Zerlina Maxwell, wondering: “Here’s a thing we should note, Zerlina Maxwell, the Republican national party distancing themselves from these candidates, repudiating these candidates. Is that enough?”
Maxwell jumped at the chance to paint the GOP and the President as racist:
I think that the voters also need to repudiate the candidates in 2018 because this is scary. This can be a slippery slope towards a lot of these candidates being elected and then they’re in Congress making policies that are going to impact people of color....
I would also argue what they are saying is just a little bit more extreme than what Donald Trump was saying during the election. I mean, certainly they weren’t saying what the gentleman said to you, that black people are genetically inferior to white people, but Donald Trump was saying the same thing using different words. He was not using dog whistles, he was being more specific. But essentially he ran on white identity politics in the election in 2016.
Even Melvin thought that went too far: “But the President never called for removing – forcibly removing black people from neighborhoods.” Maxwell admitted that he did not, but Radford then interjected: “...every person we interviewed did say they felt energized by President Trump.” Maxwell added: “And you heard David Duke say during the election that Donald Trump was speaking to people like him. And David Duke is the same ilk of these folks. And that is what is scary.”
Melvin should not have been surprised by Maxwell’s comments, since he appeared with her on Wednesday’s Megyn Kelly Today to discuss Roseanne Barr’s offensive comments. The former Clinton staffer similarly used that issue to attack Trump:
So, I think President Trump is a factor in making race and racism something that we’re all more conscious about. We’re talking about it more....I would also argue, that if you voted for Donald Trump, you tolerated a certain level of racism. That’s just a fact.
The fact is, the liberal media bring on someone like Maxwell precisely to get that kind of incendiary rhetoric to boost ratings among their left-wing viewers.
Here are excerpts of the May 31 MSNBC segment:
1:34 PM ET
CRAIG MELVIN: Midterms, five months out, we’ve been telling you about the record number of women, specifically black women, who are running for office. There’s also a growing number of candidates from another group that’s flat-out shocking. Anti-hate groups say at least eight candidates running for national office [sic] have white supremacist ties. That’s more than any election in recent memory. All of them are running explicitly on white nationalist messages. And what’s more, they believe that this is the year they can win.
NBC’s Morgan Radford traveled around the country to talk to some of these folks, she joins me now. And so does Zerlina Maxwell, Director of Progressive Programming at Sirius XM, formerly with the Clinton campaign. Also an MSNBC political analyst. We’ll talk a little bit about it after the piece because I'm happy to see you made it back in one piece.
(...)
MORGAN RADFORD: Arthur Jones is running for Congress in Chicago’s Third District....He’s also one of at least eight white nationalists running for state or federal office this year according to the Southern Poverty Law Center....Jones was a member of the American Nazi Party who denies the Holocaust ever happened....He’s also campaigning to keep Chicago’s neighborhoods 90% white.
(...)
RADFORD: 20,000 people voted for Jones in the March primary. And even though he ran uncontested, he’ll be on the Republican ticket in November, a fact many locals find unbelievable.
(...)
RADFORD: Anti-hate groups say the number of white nationalists running for office across the country this year is higher than ever before. Many of them running on the Republican ticket, like Patrick Little.
PATRICK LITTLE: This monstrous nature of the Jewish people must be known to the public.
RADFORD: You think Jews are monsters?
LITTLE: As a group, they are definitely behaving as a monster. 100%.
RADFORD: Little is running for Senator Dianne Feinstein’s seat in California and blames Jews for America’s problems.
(...)
RADFORD: He says President Trump is talking to people like him.
LITTLE: Because he dog whistled about “globalists,” I didn’t understand he was talking about Jews until after the election.
RADFORD: The state’s Republican Party says it wants nothing to do with him and declined to speak with us on camera.
(...)
RADFORD: So there’s a lot of violence that belies a lot of this type of thinking. So when we were out in the streets and we were talking to these candidates, the hardest question for them to answer was, what’s next? When I said, “What if black people don’t want to leave their neighborhoods? What if Jews don’t want to go Israel? What happens next?” And they said, “Well, you forcibly remove them.” So the answer to what happens next is an answer we’ve already seen before.
MELVIN: Kudos to you to sit through those interviews. You did, as you always do, handle it very professionally. Here’s a thing we should note, Zerlina Maxwell, the Republican national party distancing themselves from these candidates, repudiating these candidates. Is that enough?
MAXWELL: I think that the voters also need to repudiate the candidates in 2018 because this is scary. This can be a slippery slope towards a lot of these candidates being elected and then they’re in Congress making policies that are going to impact people of color.
MELVIN: You don’t think that any of these candidates are actually electable?
MAXWELL: I think that in certain districts some of these candidates could be elected.
MELVIN: One of those two people?
MAXWELL: Well, I would also argue what they are saying is just a little bit more extreme than what Donald Trump was saying during the election. I mean, certainly they weren’t saying what the gentleman said to you, that black people are genetically inferior to white people, but Donald Trump was saying the same thing using different words. He was not using dog whistles, he was being more specific. But essentially he ran on white identity politics in the election in 2016.
MELVIN: But the President never called for removing – forcibly removing black people from neighborhoods.
MAXWELL: No, but he’s talking –
RADFORD: But to clear, every person we interviewed did say they felt energized by President Trump.
MAXWELL: And you heard David Duke say during the election that Donald Trump was speaking to people like him. And David Duke is the same ilk of these folks. And that is what is scary.
(...)
