While Donald Trump’s most prominent supporters have slowly backed away from his racist crusade against Judge Gonzalo Curiel, some stand firmly behind him: his white nationalist fanboys.
As the lawsuits against Trump University continue to gain steam, Trump has taken to smearing U.S. District Judge Gonzalo P. Curiel—who presides over the case and requested a cache of related documents be released—by suggesting he is “biased” because he is of Mexican descent.
“He’s proud of his heritage,” Trump reasoned last week. “And I’m building a wall between here and Mexico.”
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Trump boosters like Newt Gingrich have called upon their man to ease up on the “inexcusable” racist attacks. “I don’t know what Trump’s reasoning was, and I don’t care,” the former House Speaker and potential Trump VP pick said. “His description of the judge in terms of his parentage is completely unacceptable.”
Top surrogate Ben Carson warned his buddy Trump: “Every human being is an individual first rather than a member of an identity group. The moment we forget that is the moment we enter into a phase of moral descent.”
“I couldn’t disagree more” with the ethnicity-based attacks, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said. Tim Scott, the GOP’s lone black senator, called the attacks “racially toxic.” And Marco Rubio told reporters: “[Trump] needs to stop saying it. [Curiel] is an American—born in the United States.”
Trump’s own campaign staff took issue with his war on a Mexican-American jurist from Indiana. During a Monday conference call, he reportedly told concerned surrogates to “throw the hell out” orders from his aides to cease talking about the lawsuit; and to intensify their attacks on Curiel.
The Donald does, however, have willing soldiers in his racist crusade. And shocker—they are white nationalists.
William Daniel Johnson, the leader of the white-nationalist American Freedom Party, told The Daily Beast he stands behind Trump, even after getting dumped as a delegate in California.
“Judge Curiel is a member of La Raza Lawyers of California. This organization, by its very name, supports the ‘Latino race,’” Johnson told The Daily Beast. “When I ran for Los Angeles Superior Court Judge in 2008, the establishment bar associations and the media called me unfit for office because I supported the interest of white Americans.
“If I cannot stand for judicial office because I support white issues, Judge Curiel should be removed from the Trump University case because of his appearance of bias towards the man who has sworn to deport illegal Mexican aliens and to build a wall along our southern border.”
Jared Taylor, a previous spokesman for the Council of Conservative Citizens—the far-right group often cited as the inspiration for Charleston black-church shooter Dylann Roof and the editor of American Renaissance—echoed Johnson’s sentiments.
“I do not think it is usually wise to attack a judge’s impartiality simply because of race or ethnicity,” he conceded to The Daily Beast. “However, Judge Curiel’s membership in the San Diego La Raza Lawyers Association, which considers illegal immigrants part of its ‘community,’ suggests that he could be biased against a candidate who promises to enforce the law and deport all illegal immigrants. People routinely accuse white judges, prosecutors, and jurors of bias and it does not cause a stir.”
Young white-nationalist leader Richard Spencer, who heads up the National Policy Institute, agrees.
“Race and ethnicity—and ideology—inform how one understands and interprets the law,” said Spencer, who has called for a “white homeland” via “peaceful ethnic cleansing” in the past.
“Curiel is a member the La Raza Lawyers of California. I do not begrudge him for joining this group. Indeed, in the future, I hope there are White Lawyers Associations. But the idea that race and ideology do not inform legal interpretation, as so many conservatives want to believe, is absurd.”
None of them explicitly said that the judge needs to be white, however.
It would just be a plus.
