In July 2016, James Edwards — a board member of the Council of Conservative Citizens (CofCC) which opposes “all efforts to mix the races” and appears to have helped inspire a racially charged 2015 mass murder intended to trigger a race war (and an act some regarded as domestic terrorism) — broadcast live from the 2016 Republican National Convention and conducted interviews with numerous prominent conservatives at the event.
It was a culmination of a pattern of Trump campaign courtship of the white supremacist right that went beyond Donald Trump’s retweeting of racist Twitter memes — a direct, sustained Trump campaign courtship of actual “alt-right” leadership that began at least as far back as early 2016 when James Edwards was granted press credentials to broadcast his CofCC-endorsed radio show live from an April 30th Memphis Trump rally.
Shortly after that, Edwards participated in a widely noticed live March 1st radio show interview with Donald Trump, Jr. Then came the RNC and its myriad opportunities for networking.
But back in 2015, Edwards’ CofCC had been in the news because of its connection to Dylann Roof’s Summer 2015 massacre of nine African-American members of a Charleston, South Carolina church prayer group. Roof told authorities he hoped the killings would provoke a race war.
“The first website I came to was the Council of Conservative Citizens,” wrote Dylann Roof in his online manifesto, found after his Summer 2015 massacre, that detailed the evolution of Roof’s racial outlook, “There were pages upon pages of these brutal black on White murders. I was in disbelief.”
After Roof’s massacre, Channel 3 News, a Memphis, Tennessee NBC affiliate station, tracked down three local CofCC board members for comment. One was CofCC board member James Edwards, who vehemently denied any responsibility, stating,
“To say that there is a "link" because he once visited the website reeks of Soviet-era smear tactics. The C of CC cannot reasonably be held accountable for the psychotic reaction this deranged individual had in response to reading truthful statements regarding interracial crime.”
Edwards’ denials notwithstanding, inflammatory material on the website of Edwards’ CofCC was indeed credited by a range of prominent mainstream media outlets (see 1,2,3) with having helped inspire Dylann Roof’s attack.
James Edwards’ Political Cesspool AM radio show has been financially sponsored by the Council of Conservative Citizens and endorsed by the CofCC as an official outlet for its views. Edwards has been both a speaker at and honored at CofCC events.
Over the twelve years of its existence, the Political Cesspool show has featured, as guests, an astonishing array of America’s leading white nationalists, white supremacists, neo-Nazis, Holocaust deniers, and neo-Confederate Southern secessionists.
According to a Southern Poverty Law Center profile on James Edwards, an October 2014 Memphis, TN celebration of the 10th anniversary of the Political Cesspool show “concluded with a salute to the Civil War general and first grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, Nathan Bedford Forrest, whose legacy Edwards compares to that of a mythological god.”
In a video taken at a 2010 CofCC event in Nashville, Edwards, standing alongside Gordon Baum — a regular guest on Edwards’ Political Cesspool show who served as CofCC’s CEO until his death in 2015, enthused,
“Coming to a Council of Conservative Citizens is kind of like spending the night in the arms of a beautiful woman. You just never want it to end. But being a member of the CofCC is like being married to a beautiful woman. That’s the gift that keeps on giving.”
Direct contact between the Trump campaign and James Edwards seems to have begun in early 2016.
In late April, 2016, Council of Conservative Citizens board member Edwards was vetted by the Trump campaign, received VIP press credentials, and then broadcast his officially CofCC-endorsed Political Cesspool racist radio show live from inside a April 30th Memphis Trump rally.
But even earlier in the year, another group that Edwards had a leadership role in began airing racist pro-Trump robocalls prior to 2016 GOP state primaries.
Edwards is one of six leaders of the American Freedom Party whose leadership overlaps with that of the Council of Conservative Citizens.
The AFP is a white supremacist political party with deep neo-Nazi root that promotes Holocaust denial, sells a novel about a coming race war in America that will lead to mass ethnic cleansing, and calls Donald Trump it’s “great white hope”.
Throughout early 2016 in U.S. states prior to their GOP primaries, the American Freedom Party ran pro-Trump robocall messages. One of the messages warned of a “gradual genocide against the white race” and urged citizens to vote for Donald Trump.
Another AFP robocall message featured white nationalist leader Jared Taylor, who has served as a spokesperson for the Council of Conservative Citizens and maintains that African-Americans are genetically predisposed to criminal behavior. In the robocall Taylor stated,
“We don’t need Muslims. We need smart, well-educated white people who will assimilate to our culture. Vote Trump.”
Then, on March 1st (“Super Tuesday”) Donald Trump, Jr. joined guest co-host James Edwards and regular host Sam Bushman for a twenty minute interview on the first one-hour segment of Bushman’s Liberty Roundtable talk radio show.
According to Edwards, he was initially contacted by a publicity agency working on behalf of the Trump campaign, concerning whether his Political Cesspool radio show was interested in doing an interview, on “Super Tuesday”, with one of Donald Trump’s sons.
As Edwards describes, because his radio show only airs on Saturday each week that was impossible. So, he asked Sam Bushman, whose Liberty Roundtable shows airs two hours a day from Monday through Friday, about collaboratively hosting such an interview on Bushman’s show.
That the two would collaborate on such a project was not surprising, because both men frequently appears as guests on each others’ radio shows and even sometimes host each others’ shows as well.
In the second one-hour segment of the March 1st Liberty Roundtable show, after the Donald Trump, Jr. interview, James Edwards, Sam Bushman, and regular Liberty Roundtable co-host Curt Crosby discussed the implications of the Trump, Jr. interview.
During that discussion, Sam Bushman repeatedly boasted (starting at 16:00 in discussion) of having produced the American Freedom Party robocalls aired in early 2016.
Those robocalls were sponsored by the American Freedom Party’s Super-PAC headed by AFP Chairman and Los Angeles lawyer William Daniel Johnson.
Johnson’s past positions have included a 1985 proposal to deport all American citizens of child-bearing age who had an “ascertainable trace of Negro blood” or more than 1/8 "Mongolian, Asian, Asia Minor, Middle Eastern, Semitic, Near Eastern, American Indian, Malay or other non-European or non-white blood".
In an October 8th, 2016 segment of James Edwards’ The Political Cesspool show (see after 16:18 in segment), Edwards discussed being contacted by William Johnson about working with Sam Bushman to produce another pro-Trump ad, to use up the remaining funds in the AFP Super-PAC, an ad that would air on radio stations across America :
“To make a long story short, he contacted myself and Sam Bushman a few days ago and he said, ‘Look, we’ve got a little money left in the Super-PAC fund. I don’t want to pull it out, I need to spend it. And we’re not talking about a lot of money here. But could y’all produce an ad, could you write and produce an ad, send it to me, I want to air this on some radio stations across the country.’
“So basically, Sam and I got together, we wrote this ad, he — I voiced the ad, and Sam produced it. Sam voiced the tag at the end saying that it was funded by Bill Johnson, and not Donald Trump’s Committee, etc. “
The Edwards/Bushman collaboration on the American Freedom Party ad came just as Trump for President campaign surrogates were flooding onto Sam Bushman’s Liberty Roundtable show as featured guests.
Below is a list of current and former Trump campaign advisers and surrogates who have appeared on the Liberty Roundtable show in 2016 :
March 1st, Donald Trump, Jr. (link)
July 20th, Trump Veterans co-chair and NH State Representative Al Badasaro, live from 2016 Republican National Convention (link)
July 22nd, Trump endorser U.S. Congressman Tom Marino, live from 2016 RNC (link)
September 2nd, Trump campaign trade adviser Curtis Ellis (link)
September 16th, Trump campaign adviser Lee Spieckerman (link)
September 19th, Trump For President National Co-Chair and Senior Policy Adviser Sam Clovis (link)
September 22nd, Trump campaign surrogate and spokeswoman Scottie Nell Hughes (link)
September 23rd, Trump campaign adviser, NH State Representative Al Baldasaro (link)
September 26th, Trump Hispanic Council Member/Advisor Steve Cortes (link)
September 28th, Trump economy adviser Stephen Moore (link)
October 3rd, former Trump campaign adviser and Trump PAC head Roger Stone (link)
October 4th, Trump national security campaign adviser former CIA head James Woolsey (link)
October 6th, Eric Trump (link)
October 20th, Roger Stone (link)
October 25th (first hour), Texas Agriculture Commissioner and Trump Campaign agriculture adviser Sid Miller (link)
October 25th (second hour), Milwaukee Sheriff, Trump campaign surrogate, and 2013 CSPOA Sheriff of the Year David A. Clarke (link)
October 31st, Trump spokeswoman Scottie Nell Hughes (link)
As described in this story, the Liberty Roundtable has also functioned as a semi-official outlet for anti-government Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA) which played significant roles in the 2014 Summer standoff between armed militia supporters of Rancher Cliven Bundy and federal agents, and the early 2016 militia occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.
Up to June 26th, 2016, Sam Bushman was the CSPOA’s official Vice President of Operations, and CSPOA head Richard Mack makes frequent appearances on the Liberty Roundtable show to discuss business.