Sen. Trent Lott’s daughter, Tyler Lott Armstrong, is suing a well-known segregationist leader in Mississippi for publishing a news conference transcript that makes it appear as if she supports his fringe views on race.
Armstrong maintains that Richard Barrett, a Democratic candidate for Mississippi governor in 1999 and leader of the white-supremacist Nationalist Movement, co-opted remarks she made to a TV reporter Friday in order to “stir up trouble.”
A transcript of Barrett’s news conference on the steps of the Jackson, Miss., city hall purports that Barrett made an introduction prior to a statement by the senator’s daughter in support of her father. But Armstrong vehemently denies being part of the event.
“I did not go hear that idiot speak,” Armstrong said of Barrett in an interview with WorldNetDaily last night. “I don’t know him from Adam’s housecat. I had never heard of him before this.”
Barrett said the purpose of the news conference was to show support for Sen. Lott, “with a few helpful reminders from the people who put him in office.”
Sen. Lott’s recent praise of former segregationist and Dixiecrat Sen. Strom Thurmond’s 1948 presidential run has created a national uproar and challenges to his Senate majority leader position.
Barrett claimed he was not representing the Nationalist Movement at the news conference, but the transcript was published on the group’s website, and he acknowledged that the views he expressed reflected the movement.
[Editor’s note: After this story was published, the Nationalist Movement modifed the transcript. The original can be found here.]
The posting of the transcript generated a buzz around the Internet. A site called “Citizens for Legitimate Government” linked to the document with the headline, “Family member gives a rally cry speech at KKK Rally.” Democrats.com said, “While Trent Hangs with BET, His Daughter Hangs with the New KKK.”
Shortly after Armstrong spoke with WorldNetDaily, a high-profile lawyer related to the family, Richard Scruggs, phoned WND to announce that he planned to file a defamation suit on behalf of the senator’s daughter.
Barrett is “going to pay for it,” said Scruggs, who is Sen. Lott’s brother-in-law and also is known for his litigation against big tobacco companies.
“This son of a b—- has cut and pasted this in order to try and get media attention,” Scruggs said. “Suing is my business, and business is good, and he’s going to end up on the wrong end of a lawsuit.”
Barrett told WND that he has a “constituent-to-elected-official relationship with Trent Lott that has been very cordial and friendly over the years.”
He expressed surprise when later in the day, Friday, Lott held a press conference in which he apologized for his state’s and country’s treatment of blacks.
“I would have sooner expected the pope to say he wasn’t Catholic than for Lott to say he wasn’t a segregationist,” Barrett said. “This was a bombshell.”
Conflicting stories
Barrett maintains that Armstrong came up and introduced herself as he was preparing to begin his 11 a.m. news conference, noting that he had spread word of it to Lott’s colleagues and allies.
But Travers Mackel, a reporter for WLBT television in Jackson, asserts that Armstrong was in the area only because she happened to be walking down the street from the nearby chamber of commerce office where she works. Mackel and his cameraman, Mike Evans, were the only media members who showed up for Barrett’s event.
While Barrett was preparing for his speech on the city hall steps, Mackel said he conducted a brief interview with Armstrong about a block away, asking how the backlash against Sen. Lott’s remarks was affecting her family.
Armstrong’s comments to WLBT appear on the station’s website, and similar remarks are included in Barrett’s transcript.
The transcript, which says “Press Conference” and “Jackson City Hall,” begins with Barrett saying:
- “I’d like to thank Trent Lott’s daughter for being here, today. And, thanks to Senator Lott, certainly, for his service to Mississippi and our country.”
The next paragraph has Armstrong’s name in italics, followed by:
- “My father is a wonderful man, who has always stood tall. The news-media has twisted his words. He has good character, he’s a Christian man and a good man and has been a wonderful family man, with his children and all.”
The transcript then says Barrett replied:
- “Mississippi is proud that he has stood tall, but please convey these memorable words to him, if you would, ‘Stand fast, Mississippians.’ May he not only stand tall, but stand fast. Strom Thurmond is a man of character, as well, which is why Mississippi has supported both Senator Thurmond and Senator Lott. Just as Jesus taught the elders in the temple, a Mississippian should be teaching his colleagues in the Senate. That is why I have asked Tyler, Trent Lott’s daughter, here, to remind her father, once again, ‘Stand Fast, Mississippians.'”
‘Back to Africa’
In his prepared remarks Friday, Barrett referred to segregation as the “moral and common-sense way for different races to touch, without colliding.”
Mississippi racial-reconciliation leader John Perkins told WND that he once debated Barrett on the Christian Broadcasting Network.
“We are at completely opposite ends of the spectrum,” said Perkins, director of the John M. Perkins Foundation for Reconciliation & Development in Jackson, Miss. “He would be happy if all black people would go back to Africa where we came from.”
The Nationalist Movement website indicates that Barrett regards “history as based on blood and seeks to perpetuate purity of the best blood through genetics and eugenics.”
Clearly upset by Barrett’s transcript, along with her father’s fight for his Senate leadership position, Armstrong defended herself and her family against charges of racism.
“I went to public schools, and I grew up in a family that was open arms to everybody,” she told WND, noting that she has African-American friends. “My father is a good man, and he raised us to treat everybody equally.”
Armstrong and her husband Matt have a one-year-old daughter.
Scruggs, who said he’s a trial lawyer who mostly votes Democrat, believes Lott is getting a “bum rap” through an unfortunate string of circumstances.
“I have great admiration for Trent,” he said. “I’ve been a close family member for 32 years; we’ve been together in intimate moments hunting, and he has never said anything remotely indicating racial animosity.
“This is just really an unfortunate and unfair characterization of Trent,” Scruggs continued, “and I’m afraid a sort of media lynching is taking place.”
