title:  Trump Just Added A White Nationalist To His Official Convention Team
text: Donald Trump s presidential campaign has enlisted an avowed white nationalist racist in order to be a delegate at the Republican Party convention in Cleveland, Ohio this summer. The announcement comes as Trump has begun holding meetings to integrate his presidential campaign with the national Republican Party.William Johnson s connection to white nationalism is not incidental to his political activism. It is central to it.On Monday evening, California s secretary of state published a list of delegates chosen by the Trump campaign for the upcoming Republican presidential primary in the state. Trump s slate includes William Johnson, one of the country s most prominent white nationalists.[ ]Johnson leads the American Freedom Party, a group that  exists to represent the political interests of White Americans  and aims to preserve  the customs and heritage of the European American people.  The AFP has never elected a candidate of its own and possesses at most a few thousand members, but it is  arguably the most important white nationalist group in the country,  according to Mark Potok, a senior fellow for the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which tracks hate groups.In an interview with Mother Jones magazine, Johnson said,  I can be a white nationalist and be a strong supporter of Donald Trump and be a good example to everybody. This is not Johnson s first work in service of the Trump campaign. He was the money behind white power robocalls promoting Trump in seven states.Trump has based his campaign on blatant racist appeals to white, conservative-leaning voters, in the hopes that they power him to victory. His campaign and party chairman Reince Priebus have indicated that they hope to appeal to rust belt voters who have gone Democratic in the last few elections in states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Ohio.The risk of that strategy is that it also motivates key elements of the coalition that elected President Barack Obama twice   women, Latinos, and blacks   as well as moderate and liberal white voters.Enlisting the aid of white nationalists may provide some form of temporary boost to Trump, but it is likely to be an albatross that can be hung around his neck in the fall election by Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party.Featured image via Flickr