Violence and Staying on Message



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.

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