Trump turned over a big rock

The non-partisan Southern Poverty Law Center sounded the alarm this week about white supremacist groups, on- and offline, citing Trump’s words and actions as signals of support.

The SPLC’s Heidi Beirich, who tracks the rhetoric and actions of hate groups, pointed to the Trump campaign’s pattern of following and retweeting influential white supremacists, giving interviews to explicitly racist media outlets, and repeatedly emphasizing the criminality of people of color and immigrants. She told reporters this treatment “reinforces the core beliefs of the white nationalist movement.”

“For the first time, they feel they have someone running for the highest office saying things they believe and want to see,” she said. “White nationalists desperately fear the demographic changes the country is going through, and they see Trump as their last stand and last best hope for controlling the country.”

Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (Mo.) says he has received a torrent of racist emails and phone calls since a hacker leaked contact information for House Democrats.

“When somebody puts your address on the internet, there are people who aren’t as mentally healthy as we hope they should be and they could do something,” he said Thursday, according to McClatchy.

“It was a lot of cowardly comments. These are probably people who wouldn’t have done it sitting in front of me. They may have been thinking it, but they wouldn’t have said it.”
Cleaver said dozens of callers harassed him with profanity and “the N word” starting on Aug. 12.

The former Kansas City, Mo., mayor said some offenders also called him “a baby killer” or insulted his Methodist faith.

Cleaver added other attacks came via email, with one even appearing to originate from a Ku Klux Klan (KKK) representative.

“Whenever I’m talking about how horrible the phone calls were, I have to remind myself that the first phone call was a classy gentleman who was very nice and helpful,” he said, referencing a man from Raytown, Mo., who warned him his information was compromised.

“He said, ‘Look, I need to let you know your phone number has been put on the internet along with your email, along with your address and along with your wife’s name.' I said, ‘How did that happen?' He said, ‘Whoever hacked your information put it online.’”

Cleaver said he is particularly cautious about threats after an attempted firebombing of his office in September 2014.

McClatchy said Eric King was sentenced last June to 10 years in federal prison for breaking a window at Cleaver’s district office and throwing Molotov cocktails inside. No one was occupying the office during the incident.

Amid the nastiness, Cleaver said, his faith in humanity has been buoyed by the first caller from Raytown, who gave the congressman a heads-up that his information had been compromised.

“Not only did he call to warn me about what was going on, sent me another text to say, ‘Hang in there,’ and ‘I’m willing to talk to law enforcement’ . . . He was a very nice guy,” Cleaver said.

“Whenever I’m talking about how horrible the phone calls were, I have to remind myself that the first phone call was a classy gentleman who was very nice and helpful,” he said.

That tipster, as it turns out, was Sam Dawson, a 57-year-old Republican who first read about the hack that exposed the congressman’s information on the conservative Drudge Report website.

“I didn’t do it expecting anything out of it, just common courtesy,” said Dawson, a stay-at-home dad of three kids. “People’s politics are politics,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean you have to do that kind of thing to people.”