Meet Corey Stewart, the clown the GOP nominated to challenge Sen. Tim Kaine

Stewart has attracted plenty of media attention, just for all the wrong reasons.

Neo-Confederatism

Dressed in a tuxedo and standing next to Gen. Robert E. Lee’s battle flag, Stewart beamed as he praised Virginia, the South, and the Confederacy. The Confederate Flag isn’t a symbol of racism. It’s a symbol of Southern heritage, he said, “it’s what makes us Virginia, and if you take that away, we lose our identity.”

Historical revisionism aside, there is just one problem. Stewart grew up in Duluth, Minn.

Flirting with the ‘alt-right’

While running for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, Stewart slammed his opponent as “the establishment’s handpicked candidate, former Bush guy, RNC chairman, and cuckservative, Ed Gillespie.”

“Cuckservative” is the term that online white nationalists use for conservatives who don’t embrace their identity politics. As it turns out, the “alt-right” is also very fond of Stewart.

When President Trump tweeted his support of Stewart, some rather unsavory characters came out of the ether to gloat, including Jason Kessler, the self-described “pro-white” partisan who helped organize the violent Unite the Right rally at Charlottesville, Va., rally last year.

Stewart also endorsed Paul Nehlen, erstwhile primary opponent to Rep. Paul Ryan. He told the openly racist Nehlen that he couldn’t “tell you how much I was inspired by you.” Later, and to his credit, Stewart disavowed Nehlen. So, you know, slow cap for disavowing a monster.

Defending Confederate monuments

There is an intellectually honest cultural argument against tearing down monuments to the Confederate war dead. Stewart doesn’t make it, though. Instead he compares Democrats to the Islamic State.

Stewart also once threatened to defund any city that tore down a Confederate statute if he was elected governor of Virginia. He even threatened to make Charlottesville buy back their statue of Lee.

Stealth editing Wikipedia

If Stewart doesn’t like a certain set of facts, he doesn’t just ignore them. He changes them. He admitted to CNN that staffers from his campaign, under the pseudonyms “VirginiaHistorian77” and “Publius2016,” edited his Wikipedia page.

One of the edits deleted a reference to a PolitiFact article that debunked his claim that he’d “cut violent crime in half.” Another edit painted his 2013 defeat for Virginia lieutenant governor as a little victory which “raised his statewide profile, which ultimately led to other statewide endeavors.”

“You’re fired”

During the 2016 campaign, Stewart served as the Virginia campaign chair for Republican then-GOP nominee Donald Trump. He didn’t last long.

His offense? He planned an October 2016 protest against the RNC’s at its Capitol Hill headquarters to decry what he saw as lackluster support for Trump from the party. David Bossie, then-deputy campaign manager for Trump, told him to knock it off and call off the event. Stewart didn’t, stating that he was “loyal to Mr. Trump not to any political operative, especially Bossie, who is essentially an RNC plant and somebody who’s trying to undermine the campaign.”

Stewart was then fired.