Anti-Trumpers fell all over themselves yesterday with a fake story that a white supremacist had been invited to the White House.
Yeah, no.
There was a white supremacist on the grounds of the WH, but there was no invitation.
He is grateful, though, for all the free publicity. He tweeted:
And for the record, I have no ties, formal or informal, to anyone in the White House.
People on Twitter said Wednesday that Patrick Casey, executive director of the white nationalist group Identity Evropa, was invited to the White House after he tweeted photos of himself in front of the building’s south front the day after the midterm elections….
“Very fine Nazi invited to Trump’s White House,” Kaili Joy Gray, managing editor at ShareBlue, said in a tweet….
So a White nationalist leader is invited to the White House and people are arguing on TV if the President has a team that supports racists? https://t.co/eAAS5sl4h6
— MikeSheaAP (@MikeSheaAP) November 7, 2018
“Pittsburgh still fresh in our minds, the Trump admin has invited a vicious white nationalist to the White House,” liberal group VoteVets said….
Casey’s tweet gained traction after PBS News Hour White House correspondent Yamiche Alcindor cited it to defend a question she asked President Donald Trump earlier that day.
“On the campaign trail, you called yourself a nationalist. Some people saw that as emboldening white nationalists,” she said at a press conference Wednesday. “There are some people that say that now the Republican Party is seen as supporting white nationalists because of your rhetoric. What do you make of that?”
“That’s such a racist question,” Trump responded.
“My Q was fair & timely,” Alcindor tweeted later in the day. “Patrick Casey, executive director of Identity Evropa, which Southern Poverty Law Center says is part of the ‘alt-right’s’ effort to recruit white, college-aged men and make them the ‘new face of white nationalism,’ tweeted that he was at the WH today.”
Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, also publicized Casey’s tweet. “We demand the White House answer why he was there,” he tweeted….
The White House press office later clarified that Casey “was one of more than twenty-five thousand people who came to the White House Fall Garden Tour, which is open to the public. Free tickets are made available to anyone who wants to attend.”
The White House Garden Tour allows visitors to “stroll around the White House grounds” twice a year on weekends in the spring and fall. The 2018 Fall Garden Tour took place on the weekend of Oct. 20, more than two weeks before Casey tweeted the photos. Garden tour visitors may snap photos in front of the south front, as Casey did….
