White nationalist leader William Johnson seems hellbent on helping Donald Trump win the White House, whether or not the campaign wants anything to do with him.
Johnson, chairman of the “white advocacy” American Freedom Party, was asked to step down as a California delegate for Trump after news of his approval sparked outrage. (The campaign attributed his inclusion to a “database error.) Though Johnson acquiesced at the time, he’s now asking if he can serve as a volunteer instead.
“I think that it is unfair that I cannot participate in the electoral process just because I am a nationalist (and have been one for 35 years),” Johnson wrote in an email to Trump’s California State Director Tim Clark that he forwarded to TPM.
“Would you please ask the Trump Headquarters if I could attend the convention as a volunteer? I will be respectful and supportive and will not cause a scene,” he promised.
Clark did not immediately respond to TPM’s request for comment.
As proof of his status as one of Trumps “biggest and oldest fans,” Johnson, who has bankrolled robocall efforts on Trump’s behalf, also sent Clark a white paper outlining proposals the presumptive GOP nominee should attend to within his first 100 days of taking office.
The policies hew to the pro-patriarchy, pro-“homogeneous population” platform that Johnson described to TPM at a white nationalist conference in Tennessee earlier this month.
As Johnson sees it, this vision for America is “being advanced by Donald Trump and other strongman leaders around the globe.”
The most controversial suggestions, buried four pages in, involve Trump unilaterally abolishing the Supreme Court’s right to review the constitutionality of “certain administrative actions” like forcibly deporting millions of undocumented immigrants and building a wall on the US-Mexico border. Instead, “an independent review panel” would oversee these proposals, as well as any concerning “religious, racial and ethnic issues.”
Johnson also suggests paying other countries to take in undocumented immigrants or, alternately, simply housing them in Puerto Rico.
Other policy points include a moratorium on all immigration, reducing the size of or eliminating the departments of the Interior, Education, Commerce, and Housing, and promoting prayers in school.
These extreme proposals are sandwiched alongside suggestions that might in theory appeal to progressives, including urging Trump to take a more “open” stance towards the press, accelerating the approval of administrative appointments, and protecting the world’s “flora and fauna.”
In one section, Johnson condemns the GOP’s stonewalling of President Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, saying it “should have been considered and voted upon.”
“Principles are more important than political maneuvering,” Johnson writes.
Read the full document below.
Sounds good, when does President Obama get to start empaneling the members?
Ok, this is one crazy world when a white nationalist has some policies more liberal than the Republicans!
I don’t know if these are stances that would appeal to progressives because they’re traditionally liberal positions, per se. An openness to the press, taking care of your environment and asking for a hearing and a vote on the President’s constitutionally required SC nomination are what any sane and rational American should be in favor of. Unless we’ve finally moved the Overton Window so far to the right that anything less than full “burn the world to the ground just because” nihilism is considered “progressive”.
This is true. It’s just too bad that your principles are abhorrent and unrealistic gibberish based on small-minded hate, Johnson.
Nice try with the database error excuse Don. Especially when by recent news reports you think data is for losers, have no ground organization and no mechanism for collecting data and analyzing it anyway.
Poor Trump! Why do these pesky white nationalists keep shoving their ideas down his throat?
Don’t they know he loves the Blacks and the Mexicans?