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You have to hand it to Donald Trump for at least one thing: he’s sort of a genius at exploiting the racist elements of the right wing voting base. His willingness — actually eagerness — to express outright the nasty bigotry most conservatives have preferred for years to keep semi-hidden is a huge part of his appeal.

Trump knows all he has to do is throw out one racist attack on an enemy and the wingnut mob will instantly seize on it and run with it, inventing fake conspiracies, spewing torrents of racism at places like Breitbart “News,” attacking and smearing, and in the case of conspiracy peddler Alex Jones, comparing Judge Gonzalo Curiel to a Ku Klux Klan Grand Dragon.

Here’s Jones with Donald Trump surrogate Roger Stone, doing what he does best — spreading racist hatred and conspiracy theories.

ALEX JONES (HOST): Today, we are going to look at this judge who has been ruling basically against [Donald] Trump and doing unprecedented things in the Trump University case. And I’ll be honest with you, I’ve kind of ignored Trump University to a certain extent — I’ve done some research. But after Trump came out and said this guy is a Mexican, and by Mexican his loyalty is to Mexico. And so, I did some research and found out wow, Trump needs to go further here. This guy is the head lawyer over a lawyer group based in California, that for decades has been promoting, basically, race-based brainwashing.

Now, I don’t like the Ku Klux Klan, but MEChA [Movimiento Estudiantil Chicanx de Aztlán] and [the National Council of] La Raza and organizations like this … these guys basically operate just like the Klan. They say for those inside our race, everything. For those outside the race, nothing. La Raza means “the race,” so I see Trump say this about this judge, and I think well you’re just saying because he’s Mexican in his heritage that he ruled against you. Has Trump gone too far? And I go look it up, and the guy is worse than what Trump’s saying. And that’s the problem, Trump will just throw something out that’s true, but then I guess with the soundbites not get into the whole background of it. So, we’re going to talk about this judge a little bit right now, but I’ll tell you it’s a fair headline to say that this judge is the equivalent of a Hispanic grand dragon.

By the way, in the real world Judge Curiel is not a member of “La Raza.” He belongs to the San Diego La Raza Lawyers Association, a very unremarkable, very standard lawyers’ group that exists to facilitate networking among Hispanic attorneys, and is unaffiliated with the National Council of La Raza.

(Via Media Matters.)