CNN published an article Wednesday suggesting that President Donald Trump’s pick to head the Department of Agriculture has a history of lobbing racial comments against supporters of the Obama administration.
Sam Clovis, a former radio host who Trump nominated to head the USDA, once called Democrats and activists “race traitors” and “race traders,” according to a report Wednesday from CNN’s KFILE. His nomination requires Senate confirmation, so any hint of racial animosity from Clovis could seriously jeopardize his changes.
Clovis made the comments in 2011 and 2012 on the now-deleted website for his radio show “Impact with Clovis,” CNN noted. The blog is archived on The Internet Archive Wayback Machine.
“He was brought up by socialists to be a socialist,” Clovis wrote of former President Barack Obama in 2011. “He has no experience at anything other than race baiting and race trading as a community organizer.”
Clovis did not respond to CNN’s request for comment, but an official with the USDA said, “Dr. Clovis is a proud conservative and a proud American. All of his reporting either on the air or in writing over the course of his career has been based on solid research and data.”
Clovis also wanted 2012 Republican primary candidates to call out progressive activists inside and outside the Obama administration for what they were: “liars, race traders and race ‘traitors.'”
CNN noted that Clovis’ lack of experience as a scientist when the outlet reported on his nomination in July, and made sure to remind readers that congressional rules maintain that the role must be filled “from among distinguished scientists.”
Clovis wrote a blog post about the differences between how Iowa handled its 2008 floods with the chaos in the aftermath that ensued in the wake of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, according to CNN’s Wednesday article. He claimed that Iowa managed to get through the floods relatively unscathed because the state “focused on family, community and the primacy of faith in life.”
Conservative activists have for years mirrored Clovis’ claims.
During the 2007 presidential election, then-New York Sen. Hillary Clinton appeared in a campaign ad targeting black people in South Carolina that criticized former President George Bush in 2005 for his response to Hurricane Katrina.
“And if you’re stuck on a rooftop or stranded in the Superdome during a hurricane, you’re invisible to this president even when you’re on CNN,” Clinton said in the ad. It aired after then-Illinois Sen. Barack Obama aired a similar spot.
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