September 2009: Tea Party Leader Denies Charges of Racism, Calls Obama ‘Our Half White, Racist President’

Mark Williams, a conservative talk radio host in Sacramento and a prominent spokesman for the nationally based Tea Party Express (TPE), sends an email to colleagues defending himself against charges of racism and calling President Obama “our half white, racist president.” Williams writes: “CNN went over more than 7,000 articles on my site; likely they also listened to the shows archived there too. No doubt they did a Lexis Nexis on me and found 30 years of work by and about me. The best that they could do as a result was string together three quotes, out of context, and throw in a false allegation of me calling Obama a ‘Nazi.’ I was in the streets marching for civil rights while _sshole southern sheriffs were swinging nail-studded baseball bats at black’s heads, and stood between black kids and even more fucked up northern assholes were throwing rocks and gas bombs at school buses in my hometown during forced busing for deseg. Two things you can always count on: I will defend my record on race to no one [sic], under any circumstances and, I will call out any racist, any time, without regard to who they are… and that includes our half white, racist president.” Williams has called Obama “an Indonesian Muslim turned welfare thug and a racist in chief” (see September 14, 2009). Williams is considered a leader of the Tea Party Express, which was created by a Republican consulting firm in 2009. [TPM Muckraker, 2/23/2010]