The GOP keeps insisting that they don’t have a race problem. There’s just one issue with that, though: they certainly do, and it is more than obvious - especially with Donald Trump as their standard-bearer. It was never more obvious than during Trump’s acceptance speech on the final night of the Republican National Convention, when they displayed a white supremacist’s tweet praising Trump in all its big, shiny glory on their jumbotron.
It’s clear that the GOP brass has really underestimated just how closely Trumpism is tied to white supremacy. The tweet was from Twitter user @Western_Triumph, whose Twitter profile is riddled with white nationalist themes, such as #alt-right, #whitegenocide, and #RaceRealist, among many others. Here is a tweet, where the user quotes Trump:
"Tonight I'm with you, I will fight for you, and I will WIN for you!"
-Donald J TrumpIt's time to start WINNING again!#TrumpIsWithYou
— Western Triumph (@Western_Triumph) July 22, 2016
And here is the tweet on the RNC’s screen:
This is running on the tweet screen loop here at #RNCinCLE check out the account. pic.twitter.com/9kgpzBLrlK
— Andy Aplikowski (@AAARF) July 22, 2016
That’s not all, either. They actually, earlier in the convention, showed a tweet on their screen from white nationalist website VDARE:
That's right-that's VDARE on the tweet-ticker inside the GOP convention hall in Cleveland. Up next: Ricky Vaughn. pic.twitter.com/VJ4os8r3DF
— Jeff B/DDHQ (@EsotericCD) July 20, 2016
VDARE.com is listed as an extremist website by the Southern Poverty Law Center. They are anti-immigration and have often described America as a “white nation.”
Hasn’t the RNC learned, after Trump’s many flirtations with heavily racist material during his campaign, that they have to check any internet activity associated with their newly crowned orange leader? They really should know better than this. But, then again, they are Republicans, and they picked America’s own Hitler as their presidential nominee, so nothing they do should surprise us anymore.
Or hell - dare I say - perhaps they knew exactly what they were doing, and they decided to take their cues from Trump - who, after all leads their party now - and go full wink, wink, nod, nod to his many white supremacist followers. Only time will tell, really.
Featured image via screen capture from Twitter