We’ve been tracking the antics of would-be white nationalist leader Matthew Heimbach since he was a student at Townson State running a self-styled “White Student Union” and disrupting a 2013 CPAC breakout group “Trump The Race Card: Are You Sick and Tired of Being Called A Racist When You Know You’re Not One?”
The weird thing here is that “Trump” almost certainly isn’t a reference to the now-President since this was back in 2013. Trump obviously had some profile as a birther at that point. But it was long before he announced he was running for President and not someone so prominent that anyone would use his name as a pun in this way.
In any case, young Heimbach and his friend Scott Terry threw a wrench in the works at the “not racist” breakout session by interrupting the event and complaining to the session leader.
From our report from the scene …
“It seems to be that you’re reaching out to voters at the expense of young white Southern males,” Terry said, adding he “came to love my people and culture” who were “being systematically disenfranchised.”
Smith responded that Douglass forgave his slavemaster.
“For giving him shelter? And food?” Terry said.
At this point the event devolved into a mess of shouting. Organizers calmed things down by asking everyone to “take the debate outside after the presentation.”
Heimbach has been trying to set up racist hate groups ever since and back in March of last year he took credit for helping shove a black protester at a Trump rally in Kentucky. Then this month three of the protestors, high school student Henry Brousseau, 17, activist Molly Shah, 36, and college student Kashiya Nwanguma, 21 sued Trump for inciting supporters to attack them at the event. Federal Judge David J. Hale thought the plaintiffs had a plausible argument that Trump had done just that.
And that all leads us to yesterday’s glorious moment when attacker Heimbach turned around and countersued Trump (!!!), claiming that the now-President had incited him to violence against the protestors. Now, to be clear, Heimbach still says the attack was awesome and that Trump is awesome too. Actually, technically, in a narrow legal sense, he denies “physically assaulting” them. But in general giving the protestors the boot was awesome. He just thinks that since Trump told him to do it that he should assume financial responsibility for any judgment against Heimbach, either Trump should or the the protesters themselves would.
