RENO, Nev. — The focus of the presidential contest turned Thursday to a blunt proposition: Do Donald Trump’s views on race disqualify him from occupying the White House?
Hillary Clinton made that very argument in a blistering speech here that recounted Trump’s racially inflammatory remarks and policies and highlighted his support with the “alt-right,” a conservative movement associated with white nationalism.
“From the start, Donald Trump has built his campaign on prejudice and paranoia,” Clinton said. “He’s taking hate groups mainstream and helping a radical fringe take over the Republican party. … A man with a long history of racial discrimination, who traffics in dark conspiracy theories drawn from the pages of supermarket tabloids and the far dark reaches of the internet, should never run our government or command our military.”
Though the Democrat stopped short of using the word “racist” to describe Trump, she questioned Trump’s capacity to serve “all voters.” Her aim was clearly to diminish him in the eyes of voters who would be uncomfortable voting for someone who appeals to racists. Prior to the speech, Clinton’s campaign released a minute-long video with images of Trump interspersed with Ku Klux Klan members and neo-Nazis touting his candidacy.
Trump, meanwhile, on Thursday continued a week-long appeal to minority voters by summoning black and Latino activists to Trump Tower in Manhattan and talking about ways to boost his low-standing in their communities. The previous day, Trump had called Clinton a “bigot” during a rally in Mississippi, suggesting she has taken minority voters for granted.
Trump held an afternoon rally in New Hampshire — where 94 percent of the population is white — and predicted that Clinton’s speech later that afternoon would be “one of the most brazen attempts at distraction in the history of politics.”
“It’s the oldest play in the Democratic playbook,” Trump said. “When Democratic policies fail, they are left with only this one tired argument: You’re racist, you’re racist, you’re racist. They keep saying it: You’re racist. It’s a tired, disgusting argument and it’s so totally predictable.”
The fact that questions about Trump’s credibility with minority voters dominated the day was by itself a victory for Clinton. She had her top aides have spent several days trying to fend off new questions about foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation and her use of a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state.
In a race in which both Clinton and Trump are viewed unfavorably by wide swaths of the public, both are seeking to make the election a referendum on the fitness of the other. Clinton’s speech here was an attempt to put the spotlight back on Trump on an issue her camp hopes will continue to be a hot topic through November.
Clinton aides acknowledged that they were going on the offensive against Trump, after weeks of mostly lying low as the businessman endured a series of controversies and missteps resulting in unfavorable news coverage and a drop in national and state polls.
On CNN, Clinton chided Trump for having questioned the citizenship of President Obama, the first African American to hold the position; for having been sued by the Justice Department for alleged discrimination in rental housing; for questioning the impartiality of a judge of Mexican heritage; and for proposing to use deportation forces to remove 11 million undocumented immigrants from the country — an idea from which Trump now seems to be backing off.
Her speech Thursday afternoon, at a community college in this general election battleground state, was advertised as focusing on Trump’s connection to the alt-right.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors extremist groups, the alt-right “is a set of far-right ideologies, groups and individuals whose core belief is that ‘white identity’ is under attack by multicultural forces using ‘political correctness’ and ‘social justice’ to undermine white people and ‘their’ civilization. Characterized by heavy use of social media and online memes, Alt-Righters eschew ‘establishment’ conservatism, skew young, and embrace white ethno-nationalism as a fundamental value.”
It’s a movement that began with a speech by conservative writer Paul Gottfried in 2008, after the Republican Party’s electoral wipeout. Gottfried called for an “alternative right” that could defeat “the neoconservative-controlled conservative establishment.” That idea was soon adopted by the “identitarian” nationalist Richard Spencer, who founded an Alternative Right website, but it was also claimed by supporters of Ron Paul and conservatives who opposed multiculturalism.
But it was Trump’s presidential campaign that brought the movement into the mainstream. From the moment he told a national audience that Mexico was sending rapists and drug-dealers across the border, Trump surged in the polls.
The movement has come under new scrutiny in the wake of a leadership shake-up in the Trump campaign that included the installation of Breitbart News head Steve Bannon as the campaign’s chief executive.
