Reprinted with permission from Shareblue.com
Hours after it was exposed as a hotbed of racism, Donald Trump used his Twitter account to praise the conservative activist group Turning Point USA.
Trump quoted the group in a tweet bashing the media for accurately covering the repeated failures of his administration.
He wrote, “‘The President has accomplished some absolutely historic things during this past year.’ Thank you Charlie Kirk of Turning Points USA. Sadly, the Fake Mainstream Media will NEVER talk about our accomplishments in their end of year reviews.”
The tweet came not long after The New Yorker published its findings about Turning Point, which has focused its fire on motivating conservative activists on college campuses, partially by funneling money into student government elections.
The magazine reported that Crystal Clanton, who served as the organization’s national field director, sent a text message to another Turning Point employee that nakedly expressed her racism.
“I HATE BLACK PEOPLE,” Clanton wrote. “Like fuck them all … I hate blacks. End of story.”
Gabrielle Fequiere, a former Turning Point employee who is black, told the New Yorker, “In looking back, I think it was racist.” She said attendees at the group’s annual student summit “spoke badly about black women having all these babies out of wedlock. It was really offensive.”
Turning Point also financed events starring Milo Yiannopoulos, the bigoted commentator who rose up in the ranks of the white supremacist “alt-right” movement. Yiannopoulos has said he hates “faggots,” lesbians, and feminists. Video uncovered by BuzzFeed showed Yiannopoulos singing “America the Beautiful” in a karaoke bar while white supremacists raised their arms in Nazi salutes.
The tweet is just the latest chapter in an ongoing relationship between the Trump clan and Turning Point. Donald Trump Jr. was recently the featured speaker at the organization’s conference, where he went on at length about his father’s presidency.
Lara Trump, Eric Trump’s wife, is also involved with the group and hosted a luncheon to promote the organization’s Young Women’s Leadership Summit.
Donald Trump is a racist, who supports racism, has called neo-Nazis “very fine people,” and champions the cause of white supremacy. It is perfectly within his character to back an organization with a sordid racial legacy like Turning Point’s, and an indicator of how far gone he is that he would do so right after this story surfaced.
