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White Nationalist Scores Press Credentials, Interview With Trump Jr.
ByALLEGRA KIRKLANDPublishedMARCH 2, 2016, 11:31 AM EST
The host of an “unapologetically pro-White” radio program received press credentials from the Donald Trump campaign at a rally last weekend in Memphis, Tennessee, according to a blog post flagged by Little Green Footballs.
James Edwards, the host of the “Political Cesspool” show, wrote a glowing blog post describing his positive experience at the Millington Regional Airport event, where he recorded an episode of his show from within the press pen. Photos interspersed throughout the post show Edwards beaming with a Trump media badge pinned to his suit jacket, as well as other reporters in the cordoned-off press area who he describes as “the enforcers of political correctness.”
“I must admit that this rally lived up to my expectation,” Edwards wrote in the post.
“I’ve been saying for years on the radio that the majority of Americans fundamentally agree with us on the issues and that the neocons were generals of a phantom army," he continued. "I am being proven right. Our people just needed a viable candidate and they’ve identified Trump as that man. There is no doubt that Trump’s populism and nationalism is galvanizing our nation and may change the course of American history for the better right before our very eyes.”
Edwards also notes that he will air a previously recorded 20-minute interview with Donald Trump, Jr. on his show on Saturday.
The Trump campaign did not immediately respond Wednesday to TPM's request for comment.
The Political Cesspool’s mission statement outlines a hard-right ideology that rejects “abortion, feminism, and sexuality” and calls “to grow the percentage of Whites in the world relative to other races.” Archived blog posts celebrate Edwards’ efforts to preserve Confederate monuments in Memphis, Tennessee and refer to interracial sex as “white genocide.”
Edwards is openly dismissive of the concept of racism—he is the author a book called “Racism, Schmacism”—though his blog posts frequently extoll the natural superiority of white Americans.
He shared an op-ed from the Jamaican Observer in praise of slavery in an August blog post,commenting, “For blacks in the Americas, slavery is the greatest thing that ever happened to them.”
Trump has faced intensifying scrutiny for his reluctance to disavow white supremacists who have publicly embraced his campaign. A white nationalist super PAC has launched robocalls in several early voting states urging voters to vote for the real estate mogul to prevent the “white race” from “dying out,” while David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard, has called electing Trump “the best thing we can do.”
After initially telling CNN that he was unfamiliar with the KKK—an oversight he blamed on a “lousy earpiece”—Trump “disavowed” the group and Duke several times this week.
Still, the campaign allowed Edwards, who has hosted Duke on his show, to receive press credentials at the Memphis rally.
The GOP candidate often devotes several minutes of his rallies to railing against the “dishonest” reporters covering his campaign, and his staffers have denied access to journalists fromUnivision, Fusion, the Des Moines Register, and the Huffington Post for what they see as overly critical coverage.
Trump requires the press to be sequestered in a gated-off section at all campaign events. When a Time magazine photographer stepped outside the media pen to take pictures of a group of protesters at a rally this week, he was tackled to the ground by a Secret Service agent. At the same Virginia event, Trump vowed to “open libel laws,” making it easier to sue journalists.
