Former Trump Convention Delegate Tells Us What ‘Make America Great Again’ REALLY Means

William Johnson (screengrab courtesy CNN via Raw Story)
William Johnson (screengrab courtesy CNN via Raw Story)

Last week, the Donald Trump campaign was forced into damage control mode when it emerged that one of its pledged delegates to the Republican National Convention was a stone-cold racist. The guy ultimately decided not to go to Cleveland, but is still 100 percent behind Trump’s bid to buy the presidency. In fact, he thinks he has a very good idea what Trump is saying when he promises to “Make America Great Again.” Apparently it means rolling back the clock to the days before women got out of the kitchen.

William Johnson stirred up quite a ruckus when Mother Jones discovered Trump had tapped him as a delegate from California. Johnson is the chairman of the American Freedom Party, an open and unashamed white nationalist party. He favors a constitutional amendment that would strip all nonwhites of their citizenship.

Within hours of the discovery, the Trump campaign announced that he had only been selected because of a “database error.” Johnson himself admitted as much, telling CNN’s Jake Tapper that he must have slipped through the cracks. Watch here.

Johnson told Tapper that, even if his selection was an accident, it was a sign that white nationalist politics have gone mainstream. After all, people have gone from likening him to Hitler to likening him to the Donald. However, later on someone must have told Johnson that he would be far too controversial to have any role in the convention, because he notified the Trump campaign that he won’t be going to Cleveland.

Johnson sat down on Friday for an interview with Fusion. As Johnson sees it, “Make America Great Again” is really a call to restore “strong, male-led leadership.” Johnson’s party is vehemently opposed to globalism, which Johnson believes is “killing the white race” by promoting greater diversity and a “touchy-feely, feminist approach.”

Johnson considers himself a nationalist, and argues that one tenet of nationalism is patriarchy. He believes that it’s time to go back to the days where the man worked and the woman stayed at home. “When Trump says ‘Make America Great Again,'” Johnson said, “that’s what we think it means.”

So that’s how to fix it, huh? Tell women to just stay home rather that contaminate politics with their “touchy-feely” ways? Seen in that light, it’s probably a good thing Johnson stayed home from the convention. If he said that in public, he’d probably be torn to shreds by the female delegates.

Darrell is a 30-something graduate of the University of North Carolina who considers himself a journalist of the old school. An attempt to turn him into a member of the religious right in college only succeeded in turning him into the religious right's worst nightmare--a charismatic Christian who is an unapologetic liberal. His desire to stand up for those who have been scared into silence only increased when he survived an abusive three-year marriage. You may know him on Daily Kos as Christian Dem in NC. Follow him on Twitter @DarrellLucus or connect with him on Facebook. Click here to buy Darrell a Mello Yello.