White Supremacists Celebrate GOP Wins In Midterms Elections
LEMON: New questions tonight about the reach and influence of white supremacists following the midterm elections. While the fate of the Senate seat in Florida hangs in the balance, Nazi sympathizers are cheering that the Senate will remain in Republicans' hands. They see this as a win for President Trump and a means to push their race war forward and its agenda of hate. CNN's Sara Sidner has the story now.</s>SARA SIDNER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It was a meme for the midterms on a website visited more than 2.5 million times a month. "Us if we lose," it read, depicting white men ready for war. Followed by "them if we win," showing Jews being led to their death.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They're begging their followers to go out and find ways to get Republicans in office, because they believe it will be easier for these policies to sail through.</s>TRUMP: It was a big day yesterday.</s>SIDNER: When President Trump celebrated the Senate victory, so did white supremacists. This changed history, neo-Nazi Andrew England said on his site, the Daily Stormer, which is the most widely read neo-Nazi website in America. "This is a race war, period." They also reveled in the re-election of Congressman Steve King who has a history of making racist remarks like in this 2017 anti-immigration tweet saying, we can't restore our civilization with somebody else's babies or his unsubstantiated claim about immigrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They weigh 130 pounds and they've got calves the size of cantaloupes because they're hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert.</s>SIDNER: If last night was a referendum on Steve King's white nationalism as the Democrats are trying to frame it then white nationalism won. England wrote on his site. Both King and President Trump vehemently deny they are racist or enable white supremacists. Trump pushed back at a recent press conference when asked if the Republican Party was seen as supporting white nationalists because of his rhetoric.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What do you make of that?</s>TRUMP: I don't believe it.</s>SIDNER: But purposely or not the President speaks a language that racists and neo-Nazis embrace. Like his habit of linking immigrants to crime.</s>TRUMP: They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists.</s>SIDNER: The government accountability office says right-wing extremists are responsible for the vast majority of deadly terror attacks in the U.S. since 9/11.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I was involved in the movement at the very dawn of the internet.</s>SIDNER: Tony McAleer is a former skinhead. He says white supremacists look for any sign of approval from politicians in power.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The whole goal of people like me back in the day was to mainstream. Mainstream the idea.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It doesn't take an overt slur for these individuals to basically become emboldened.</s>SIDNER: Take the President's threat to tell the military to consider rocks being thrown by migrants as guns being fired.</s>TRUMP: When they throw rocks like they did at the Mexico military and police, I say consider it a rifle.</s>SIDNER (voice over): Those comments cheered online by racist trolls. "Hopefully they throw stones," they write. The Daily Stormer's Web master, Andrew Auernheimer, is clear about their purpose.</s>ANDREW AUERNHEIMER, DAILY STORMER'S WEB MASTER: We are trying to make a racist army.</s>SIDNER (voice over): White nationalists swooned at how the president described himself.</s>TRUMP: I am a nationalist.</s>SIDNER (voice over): Translation, he is one of us.</s>STEVE MOORE, RETIRED FBI HATE CRIMES INVESTIGATOR: It doesn't mean necessarily that he's saying that. It's just that he hasn't said anything to convince them that he disagrees with them.</s>SIDNER (voice over): Critics of Trump's rhetoric believe his reluctance to rein in the radical side of his base has only empowered them. Their hateful agenda gaining speed.</s>LEMON: So disgusting. Sara, thank you. Incredible report.</s>SIDNER: Thank you.</s>LEMON: Sara joins us now. This isn't just dog whistles. Right? And you -- you have spoken with several Nazis, KKK members. What are they saying about the president's rhetoric?</s>SIDNER: He's their best hope. He's their great white hope. Now, those who don't like him, which you often hear, oh, they don't actually like him, they actually say bad things about him. Usually, it's because he doesn't go far enough. He's not racist enough. He has Jewish family members. Those things are things that bother the neo-Nazis or the KKK members. But the truth of the matter is in talking to them, many of them, those who are still in the organizations and those who have left, will say to me that when they hear his words, it sounds exactly like the same words they use in their group settings when they talk about especially immigration. The browning of America. That phrase is used a lot. So to hear him say "I'm a nationalist," they were bursting with pride because to everyone who heard that, it was "I'm a white nationalist." The president said he didn't know anything about that, he hadn't heard of white nationalists or however he put it, but that is how it was read by almost every white nationalist out there.</s>LEMON: So, let's talk about this threat of white nationalism. Law enforcement missed the mark, underestimate it?</s>SIDNER: I talked to several FBI agents who are out of the FBI now, but who infiltrated some of these groups, and their answer is yes. What has happened with law enforcement? They went after 9/11 and rightly so. They started going after, OK, what is the biggest threat? And to them right after 9/11, it was Islamic terrorism, period. Fast forward, and if you look at the numbers, from the government accountability office itself, there are more attacks by far right-wing groups than there have been by anyone who is Muslim. If you just look at the simple numbers, law enforcement has really missed the mark. And how have they missed it? If you look at Charlottesville, some of the people who showed up there had criminal histories already. Some of those same people were allowed to go to Charlottesville, act violent, leave. Right? Leave. They weren't -- some of them weren't arrested and show up at the next rally or the next rally, the organizers of that got to keep showing up. If those had been Muslim groups that had been waving an ISIS flag, one of the FBI agents told me, it would be a whole different ball game.</s>LEMON: Yes. The numbers are there. When you read the numbers, you give the truth, people still get upset because they don't want to hear it. They don't believe when you talk about terrorism and radicals. They don't want to believe that it's actually white American men who can be responsible for most of it. What is that?</s>SIDNER: I think in this country and you're no stranger to this, there is still a sense of trying to protect your own. And if you look at the way that this country was built, there's a sense of you can't say that about good, solid Americans. But these Americans are targeting people of color. They're targeting Muslims. They're targeting Latinos. They're targeting blacks. They're targeting anybody. They're targeting gays at times. But some of them are also targeting law enforcement because they don't believe law enforcement is doing enough to stop the browning of America. They are dangerous. Period. Ask anybody who has been investigating these guys as part of their career, and they will tell you, they are truly a danger to this society and they need to be held to account.</s>LEMON: Great reporting.</s>SIDNER: Thank you.</s>LEMON: Thank you, Sara. Well, we've got a lot more to talk about. Scott Jennings is here. Nina Turner, Rick Wilson. We're going to dig into it, next.