KKK Chief pressed on Infrastructure at Hate News Conference
(15 August 2017) National
Ku Klux Klan head D.J. Turnip appeared uneasy and ill-prepared when confronting questions on municipal infrastructure, sidewalk maintenance, and urban development in Brooklyn, NY on
Tuesday.
“You
need a lot of people, some rough people, tradespeople and workies, whatever you
want to call them, to build this stuff, you know,” Turnip said, clearly uncomfortable with
the subject and seeming to improvise. “And I don't know if you know, they have
to have a permit.”
At
the news conference, called to launch his national strategy for violent racism
and right-wing terrorism in America, Turnip struggled to keep on message and
focus when pressed on the infrastructure issues.
“How
about a couple of questions on violence and hatred ?” said Turnip at points
throughout the half-hour session with the media.
Reporters
repeatedly brought the issue back to the state of roads, bridges, and buildings
because of recent events in the Town of Streetsville. There on Saturday, a driver rammed his
car into an abutment causing a bridge to collapse and dividing the two sides of the
middle American city.
“Here
is the thing - Excuse me - Excuse me, here is the thing,” the Klan leader explained. “I
didn't wait long. I wanted to make sure, unlike other extremists, that what I said
was correct, not make a quick statement on this bridge thing.”
Turnip
issued a statement about the bridge failure on Monday, recognizing growing
public interest in the issue, and he pulled a copy from his coat to reference
at the hate and violence media session.
“The
statement I made on Monday, the real statement, was a fine statement but you
don't make statements that direct about infrastructure unless you know the facts,” the racist leader
said. “It takes a little while to get the facts. You still don't know the
facts. It is a very, very important process to me. It is a very important
statement. So, I don't want to go quickly and just make a statement for the
sake of making a statement. I want to know the facts – like the fact that both
sides of that bridge share in the collapse - no one ever wants to talk about
that.”
Returning
to the subject of the news conference, the recognized leader of the fear world
said progress in fostering hatred and racism in the U.S. had been thwarted in
the past by a lack of vision, under investment, and federal bureaucracies.
- 30 -
