Boyles still in denial that Tancredo sang "Dixie" with white supremacists at speech

Summary: Despite news reports to the contrary, Peter Boyles again denied that U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) sang the Confederate anthem "Dixie" with white supremacists at a September 9 speech in South Carolina.

On the September 29 broadcast of KBDI Channel 12's program Colorado Inside Out, host Peter Boyles denied that Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) sang the Confederate anthem "Dixie" with white supremacists at a September 9 speech Tancredo delivered in South Carolina, despite several news reports to the contrary.

As Colorado Media Matters has noted, Tancredo attended a September 9 fundraiser in Columbia, South Carolina, for the conservative Americans Have Had Enough Coalition. Describing the fundraiser, the Rocky Mountain News reported September 13 that "Tancredo gave his standard immigration stump speech" and that "[t]here were Confederate flags in the room, and he [Tancredo] joined audience members in singing the Southern anthem Dixie." Similarly, The Denver Post reported September 13, "The Southern Poverty Law Center [SPLC] went to Saturday's museum event and reported details on its website, saying Tancredo 'addressed the standing-room audience of 200 to 250 from behind a podium draped in a Confederate battle flag.' "

A September 14 Post article reported, "About 25 members of the South Carolina League of the South, which advocates an 'independent Southern republic,' attended Tancredo's speech Saturday in Columbia, S.C., said league board member Lourie Salley." Further, the News reported September 13 that Salley said the South Carolina League of the South "encourage[d] its members to turn out for it [Tancredo's September 9 speech at the South Carolina state museum]."

On the September 13 broadcast of The Peter Boyles Show, Boyles declared the League of the South was a "racist" organization, and the Post reported September 13 that the SPLC and the Anti-Defamation League "consider the organization [the League of the South] a white-supremacist hate group." The Post reported that the League of the South's South Carolina chapter is a "neo-confederate group" and that "its website advocates 'a free and independent Southern republic' and eschews racial equality."

Further, a September 21 Westword article by Westword editor and Colorado Inside Out panelist Patricia Calhoun put the question of whether Tancredo actually sang "Dixie" at the event to a Tancredo spokesman:

And then, as he [Tancredo] exited the room, some members of the audience started singing "Dixie." So did Colorado's controversial congressman really join in?

"Yes and no," says Carlos Espinosa, Tancredo's recently returned spokesman. "It was kind of in between. He was singing it as he was waving." And not so much singing as faking the chorus, since the unofficial anthem of the Confederacy isn't exactly a pick hit for second-generation Italians growing up in northwest Denver.

Some advice for Tancredo the next time he finds himself in such a spot: Run.

On the September 29 edition of Colorado Inside Out, when panelist Dani Newsum during the show's regular "Disgrace of the Week" segment asked for an apology from Tancredo for "singing 'Dixie' with a bunch of white supremacists," Boyles declared, "That's not true":

NEWSUM: Well, you're my congressman, Tom Tancredo, and I want an apology for your singing "Dixie" with a bunch of white supremacists.

BOYLES: That isn't true. But go ahead, Craig.

NEWSUM: He hummed it. He was there.

BOYLES: There was [sic] not white supremacists.

It was not the first time Boyles falsely denied that white supremacists attended the event. As Colorado Media Matters has noted, during the September 18 broadcast of The Peter Boyles Show, Boyles claimed it "isn't true" that League of the South members attended the speech. Boyles falsely claimed that "we know that the League of the South wasn't there."

—T.S.P.