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Sam Clovis is President Donald Trump‘s nominee to be the Department of Agriculture’s chief scientist.
But before he was the president’s nominee, he maintained a blog for years that said progressives were “enslaving” minorities and called black leaders “race traders.” He also claimed in the blog that former president Barack Obama was a “communist.”
The blog is now defunct but was for a time maintained in relation to his radio show “Impact with Clovis,” which used to air on Sioux City KSCJ. Although the show itself does not have any online copies, the blog is archived on The Internet Archive Wayback Machine.
At one point in the blog, Clovis told Republican primary candidates to call out progressives as “liars, race traders and race ‘traitors.’”
He also wondered aloud whether Obama would put conservatives on a kill list an suggested that Obama-era “czars” were using taxpayer money to buy off scientists.
These blog posts are troubling to Democrats in the Senate, who are already lambasting Trump’s nomination because Clovis has been openly skeptical of climate change and lacks scientific credentials. And since Clovis’ position requires a Senate vote, these concerns are likely to come up during debate and may be a stumbling block to netting the position for Clovis.
A spokesperson for the USDA has said of the nominee, “Dr. Clovis is a proud conservative and a proud American. All of his reporting either on the air or in writing over the course of his career has been based on solid research and data. He is after all an academic.”
