Thread: Donald Trump’s delegate ineptitude stumbles into white nationalism

Donald Trump’s delegate ineptitude stumbles into white nationalism
By Philip Bump May 10 at 5:02 PM

Donald Trump reacts to a song during a campaign rally at the Indiana Theater in Terre Haute, Ind. (Seth Perlman/AP)

This article has been updated.

Donald Trump's stumbling, tricky effort to claim the Republican Party nomination for the presidency achieved success seven days ago, putting to rest questions about the extent to which the candidate and his team were having trouble doing the basic work of lining up delegates and preparing for a contested convention vote.

Or, at least, the questions were put to rest for a few days.

On Tuesday, the liberal magazine Mother Jones reported a development that can only be described as astonishing. William Johnson, a prominent white nationalist who recorded a robocall on behalf of Trump that ran in several states earlier this year, says he received an email from the Trump campaign confirming that he had been chosen to represent Trump for California at the convention in Cleveland.

Mother Jones's Josh Harkinson reports:

In order to be approved he had to sign this pledge sent to him by the campaign: "I, William Johnson, endorse Donald J. Trump for the office of President of the United States. I pledge to cast ALL of my ballots to elect Donald J. Trump on every round of balloting at the 2016 Republican National Convention so that we can MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!" After he signed, the Trump campaign added his name to the list of 169 delegates it forwarded to the secretary of state.

Johnson leads the American Freedom Party, a group that "exists to represent the political interests of white Americans" and aims to preserve "the customs and heritage of the European American people." ... Johnson got the news that he had been selected by Trump in a congratulatory email sent to him by the campaign's California delegate coordinator, Katie Lagomarsino.

Sure enough, the list at the California secretary of state's website includes Johnson.

As it stands, if Trump wins a majority of the votes in California's 34th congressional district, Johnson is going to Cleveland.

Update: In an email, Trump campaign spokewoman Hope Hicks blamed a glitch.

"Yesterday the Trump campaign submitted its list of California delegates to be certified by the Secretary of State of California," she told The Post. "A database error led to the inclusion of a potential delegate that had been rejected and removed from the campaign’s list in February 2016."

Update No. 2: Johnson, as one might have expected would happen, is out.

Update No. 3: But Johnson's withdrawal may not matter.

There's only one charitable assumption that can be drawn from Johnson's inclusion: Trump's team failed to actually vet the people who put their names forward. And so an unabashed white nationalist gets the nod. He's excited about it, too, telling Harkinson: "I just hope to show how I can be mainstream and have these views. I can be a white nationalist and be a strong supporter of Donald Trump and be a good example to everybody."

Remember: It was delegate troubles that prompted Trump's recent feud with the Republican Party. After his team's ineptitude resulted in his getting shut out of delegates in Colorado, Trump began railing against the primary system, suggesting that it was rigged against him. (In fact, the opposite was true; Trump repeatedly got more delegates than he did vote share, rigging the system in his favor.) After being out-performed in the delegate selection process in several other states, Trump's fury grew. It was only once he won a string of Northeastern states by wide margins and then landed the knock-out punch in Indiana that his concerns subsided.

Since becoming the presumptive nominee, there has been other confusion about how it was moving forward. The day after his Indiana win, Trump told the New York Times that his vice presidential selection team would include Ben Carson, resulting in Carson appearing on talk shows discussing the options. But on Tuesday, The Post reported that the team would be headed up by campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. Carson aide Armstrong Williams told the Daily Beast that Carson was just asked for a list of possible names.

The candidate himself has had some apparent stumbles. Comments offered in interviews dealing with taxing the wealthy and raising the minimum wage seemed at first glance to contradict what he's said in the past, suggesting that he might be moderating his positions for the general election. As our Greg Sargent points out, though, the real culprit is probably vagueness. Trump has long understood that regular voters don't care about policy specifics; his vague nods at questions asked by interviewers leave it up to listeners to hear what they want to hear.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...e-nationalism/

Well, yes, this was a "stumble", an oversight, a glitch, a "whatever". So glad Mother Jones caught it and wrote about it, and from there the Washington Post wrote about it. Otherwise, they've nothing to write about. Well, maybe they do, but they would rather write about Trump and his "stumbles" all the way to the Republican Nomination. They could write about Hillary stealing the White House furniture, Bill pokin' an intern in the Oval Office, Bill and Hillary renting out the Lincoln Bedroom to Chinese donors, Bill signing NAFTA, Hillary lying to the families of the 4 Americans killed in Benghazi, the chaos in Libya and Syria and Honduras and almost every country she involved herself with, and so on and so on and so on.

It would seem that all this Hillary and Bill stuff is far more important and interesting than a staff delegate coordinator approving a White Nationalist as a delegate for Trump. But then the Hillary and Bill stuff wouldn't be Trump News, and we all know how much more interesting Trump News is, no matter how menial or trivial, than the bomb dropper news of Hillary and Bill.

I guess, the Clintons are just boring to the MSM.

And we know boring doesn't sell newspapers and it won't win an election this November. No, boring won't win against the Hang on Every Word, Grasp At Every Straw, Overlook Nothing, Leave No Stone Unturned of .... Trump News.

There are words for this: charisma, magnetism, celebrity, star power to name a few. And no one's proven that case better for Trump than the MSM.

Get ready to say "Hello, Mr. President".

Is it a crime to be a white nationalist ?

Calif. Secretary of State’s Office: Trump Campaign is Too Late to Remove White Nationalist Delegate

May. 10, 2016 10:01pm Kaitlyn Schallhorn

The GOP presumptive nominee Donald Trump’s campaign was quick to say a white nationalist delegate was approved as a result of the a clerical error, but the California secretary of state’s office says it’s too late to make any changes.

Sam Mahood, a spokesperson for the secretary of state’s office, told TheBlaze Tuesday night that Trump’s campaign submitted their revised delegate list to their office past the deadline.

“Their delegate list is still the same. We told them that in an email today,” Mahood said.

Trump’s campaign was thrust into the spotlight after Mother Jones reported that the leader of America’s Freedom Party, William Johnson, was a member of the campaign’s California delegates. Soon thereafter, Trump’s campaign released a statement that said a certain delegate had simply been approved by the campaign via a clerical error.

“Yesterday the Trump campaign submitted its list of California delegates to be certified by the Secretary of State of California,” Tim Clark, Trump’s California state director, said. “Upon careful review of computer records, the inclusion of a potential delegate that had previously been rejected and removed from the campaign’s list in February 2016, was discovered. This was immediately corrected and a final list, which does not include this individual, was submitted for certification.”

Johnson himself told TheBlaze Tuesday that he had received an email from the Trump campaign stating that he was not, in fact, selected as a delegate.

“I was naive to think I could make it all the way to the convention,” Johnson said.

However, according to Mahood, Trump’s delegation list will remain unchanged.

A spokesperson for the Trump campaign was not immediately available for comment Tuesday night.

Calif. Secretary of State’s Office: Trump Campaign is Too Late to Remove White Nationalist Delegate