![]() On Wednesday Trump told reporters at the White House: “I don’t know who the Proud Boys are.” The user tagged the post #threepercenters – a far-right militia group. The group’s founder, Gavin McInnes, posted Trump’s quote amid a slew of his more typical messages, including several which were homophobic.Īnother user posted an image of the Gadsden flag – a snake on a yellow background, which has become a popular symbol among the right – with the words “Stand back and stand by” beneath it. On Parler, a social network created for conservatives and the far right, Proud Boys was still trending on Wednesday morning. They quickly offered for sale T-shirts with the motif “Standing by”.Ġ6:22 Biden and Trump trade insults in frenzied presidential debate – video highlights The Proud Boys reveled in the presidential endorsement. “I am urging them to do it.”Īs Trump cited, without evidence, concerns about fraud, some of the first groups to respond to his call for action were rightwing extremists. “I am urging my supporters to go into the polls and watch very carefully, because that’s what has to happen,” Trump said on Tuesday night. Trump’s comments on voter fraud also fit a pattern of the president seemingly attempting to intimidate voters. A month earlier, Trump retweeted a Twitter account called WhiteGenocideTM, which had previously posted racist material. In February 2016, while running for president, Trump refused to condemn the prominent white supremacist and former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, who endorsed him. After an anti-fascism protester was killed at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville in 2017, Trump claimed there were “very fine people on both sides”. Trump’s answer fits with similar comments throughout his presidential campaign and presidency. He then name-checked the Proud Boys, in a move that the group itself quickly celebrated as a call to arms from the Oval Office. Asked if he was willing “to condemn white supremacists and militia groups”, Trump instead sidestepped the question, and seemed to equate those groups with “leftwing” violence. On Tuesday, in front of perhaps his largest audience yet this election cycle, Trump doubled down on that rhetoric. 01:01 Trump denies knowledge of the Proud Boys despite telling the far-right group to 'stand by' – video
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