Hillary Clinton is set to to deliver a major speech today on Donald Trump becoming the champion of the alt-right movement, which is rife with racism and misogyny. Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway has a response: What’s the alt-right?
Norah O’Donnell this morning asked: “Steve Bannon, who led the Breitbart web site, is now part of the Trump campaign, and has heralded the alt-right movement. How would you describe the alt-right movement?”
“I am not that familiar with it, to be frank with you,” Conway responded. “I’ve read about it. But I think we all start cherrypicking headlines from a web site. And is Hillary Clinton running against a web site?”
Anthony Mason asked: “Would you say the Trump campaign has a platform for the alt-right movement?”
“No, not at all. We’ve never even discussed it internally. It certainly isn’t a part of our strategy meetings. It’s nothing that Mr. Trump says out on the stump.”
Considering that the Trump campaign and Breitbart are now essentially a single organization, and that Trump has a penchant for retweeting alt-right memes, a lot of people might find this hard to believe. But in some ways, it really does go right back to the original Know-Nothing movement of the mid-1800s—so named because its members were supposed to say, “I know nothing,” about its secretive meetings.