The Donald Trump campaign has blamed the nomination of a white nationalist as a California delegate on a “database error.” Don’t you just hate it when that happens?
The news yesterday that the Trump campaign had selected William Daniel Johnson — a lawyer who had “once called for a constitutional amendment which would revoke citizenship from all non-white Americans” — was disturbing but not at all a surprise.
After all, this is the same candidate who, when questioned about his support from white supremacists, responded “Everybody likes me”. This is the same candidate who declined to immediately disavow support from the KKK and David Duke, and this is the same candidate who has retweeted white nationalists.
What’s astonishing is that even in plain view of the disturbing facts, the Trump campaign is trying to play off his support from white supremacists as an innocent clerical error.
Initially, a Trump spokesperson offered “an unequivocal denial” of Johnson’s inclusion, saying “This report is totally false. He has not, nor will he be, selected as a delegate.”
Except, Mother Jones reported that Johnson had received the news that he had been selected as a Trump delegate “in a congratulatory email sent to him by the campaign’s California delegate coordinator, Katie Lagomarsino.”
Yeah, sounds like a real accident to us.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the “database error” only excuse came after the campaign was caught red-handed having sought the support of this white nationalist. But even then, the headaches aren’t over for the campaign.
While Trump’s California director emailed reporters that Johnson would be removed from the delegate list, a press officer for the California Secretary of State said that original delegate list containing Johnson would stand because the new delegate list submitted by the Trump campaign was after the state deadline.
So whether or not Johnson gets to cast his vote, this prominent white supremacist remains “a certified delegate for the campaign” on paper.
This is what the campaign for the presumptive Republican nominee for President has become, and his disturbing attempt to dismiss his embrace of bigotry as computer error speaks to the immoral nature of his campaign.
As David Leopold wrote in his new Medium piece yesterday:
“It’s now about protecting our nation from the likes of a man whose very presence in the Oval Office would threaten America’s core values and, perhaps, the strength of our democracy. Trump must not be passed off as merely politically incorrect, controversial, or the product of untapped voter anger. Donald Trump is a racist, misogynist, nativist demagogue. Period.”
