Wednesday, August 23, 2017

About That Guy Behind Dolt 45 in Phoenix...

Looks like John Aravosis was also curious about the black guy in Phoenix.





Read his whole thread here, his previous story on the guy during the campaign here.

And then there's this Miami New Times story about who appears to be the same person.


[October 12, 2016] "Blacks are for Trump and the left can't stand it," writes @LawlessPirate, with another pic of the sign-waving man wearing a shirt reading "Trump & Republicans Are Not Racist."

[...]

He's none other than Michael the Black Man, also known as Maurice Woodside or Michael Symonette, who has made waves in Miami in recent years with protests against the Democratic Party and rallies for the GOP.

He's also a former member of the murderous Yahweh ben Yahweh cult, which was led by the charismatic preacher Hulon Mitchell Jr., who was charged by the feds in 1990 with conspiracy in killings that included a gruesome beheading in the Everglades.

Michael, along with 15 other Yahweh followers, was charged for allegedly conspiring in two murders; his brother, who was also in the cult, told jurors that Michael had helped beat one man who was later killed and stuck a sharpened stick into another man's eyeball. But jurors found Michael (and six other Yahweh followers) innocent. They sent Mitchell away for 20 years in the federal pen.

In the years that followed, he changed his last name to Symonette, made a career as a musician, started a radio station in Miami and then re-invented himself as Michael the Black Man, an anti-gay, anti-liberal preacher with a golden instinct for getting on TV at GOP events.

[...]

Since 1997, he's been charged with grand theft auto, carrying a weapon onto an airplane and threatening a police officer, but never convicted in any of those cases.

  Miami New Times
"Some very fine people."
Trump's Lakeland rally wasn't the first time that his campaign gave Michael prime seating. A reader sent New Times photos from Trump's Sept. 17 rally at downtown Miami's James L. Knight Center. The photos show Michael at the front of the audience.


Here's the same guy from last night in Phoenix, with the same sign and wearing the same shirt:


And they keep using this guy.  Jesus.

Salon did a story on him in October of 2016, as did the Washington Post today, filling in all the blanks.  Trump said in Phoenix that he invented extreme vetting.  There's one he missed.



What's going on is these rallies are an extension of the Trump campaign, and the Trump campaign has people they bring in for photo coverage. I'm sure they're not the only campaign that does it. But you'd think they'd vet them a little better.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

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