RACISM/TRUMP PEOPLE: “Speaking to a racially mixed audience in August 2016, Corey Stewart, the far-right provocateur who won the Republican Senate nomination in Virginia last week, hailed the renaming of a middle school to honor a local black philanthropist instead of a former governor with segregationist roots…But six months later, he was singing a notably different and harsher tune. Mr. Stewart stood beside the controversial statue of Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville, and raised his voice to denounce protesters calling for the monument’s removal. ‘They have no respect for our heritage,’ he said, calling the Confederate general ‘a great American.’ Mr. Stewart himself was a Minnesota transplant, who grew up in Duluth and went to law school in St. Paul. But his defense of the Confederacy, which was a central theme in his 2017 run for governor, and his invocation of diversity, which drew applause on his home turf, illustrate a blunt approach to racial issues that mimics President Trump’s. Both men have praised white nationalists in the past while talking about race to suit their purposes — Mr. Trump often takes credit for low black unemployment — and have especially used attacks on immigrants to get attention and stand out among more conventional politicians.”
-Trip Gabriel and Jonathan Martin, “Corey Stewart, Virginia Senate Nominee, Evokes Trump on Racial Issues,” The New York Times online, June 17, 2018