At a press conference outside this weekend’s Values Voter Summit, the annual Religious Right gathering organized by the Family Research Council, Alternet’s Adele Stan asked FRC president Tony Perkins what he thought of the Donald Trump campaign’s increasing embrace of the racist alt-right movement. Perkins has said that he’ll vote for Trump and this year’s Values Voter Summit was in part an effort to convince Christian conservatives to support the GOP nominee.
In response to Stan’s question, Perkins first seemed to indicate that he didn’t know what the alt-right was, but then praised the Trump campaign for giving “voice to a lot of people who feel like their voice has all but been snuffed out under this administration,” saying that “there have been a lot of alternative voices that have risen up” as the Obama administration “has increasingly tried to marginalize people who do not surrender to a progressive, liberal agenda.”
Here’s the full exchange, via Alternet:
AlterNet: I’m wondering what you make of Trump’s hiring of Steve Bannon, who said that he had provided the platform for the alt-right.
Tony Perkins: The what?
AlterNet: The alt-right, which Hillary Clinton—
TP: —I didn’t hear his comment, so I can’t really speak to that. I can speak to the fact that, in the last eight years, this administration, which Hillary Clinton has been a part of, has increasingly tried to marginalize people who do not surrender to a progressive, liberal agenda. And there have been a lot of alternative voices that have risen up, just because Americans feel they are under constant threat by this administration’s policies. So, what has given Donald Trump, I believe, the nomination, is that he has given voice to a lot of people who feel like their voice has all but been snuffed out under this administration.
