Godson of KKK grand wizard explains his successful Trump-like ‘dog whistle’ campaign for GOP seat in Mar-a-Lago area

CNN's Van Jones interviewed on Saturday a former white supremacist who successfully used racial "dog whistle" campaign tactics to win elective office in the Mar-a-Lago area.

Derek Black is the son of Stormfront founder Don Black and the godson of former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke.

"What is behind this appeal for white nationalism in America?" Jones asked.

"Coming from that background that I do, it's always been happening. It's always been -- sometimes not on tv -- but it's always been there, there's always been people who were saying those things you saw at Charlottesville, there's always been politicians saying the things that Donald Trump says now," Black explained.

"They didn't get as much support and I think we didn't pay as much attention to them as we probably should have," he noted.

"You actually were able to run for office and win using some of these kind of dog whistles," Jones noted. "One of the dog whistles that you were part of this movement to mainstream these ideas."

"Yeah, I ran for this little committee seat, a Republican committee seat in south Florida, right across the water from Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump's house there -- so he's always been in my life," Black explained.

"And I went door to door, and I said stuff like, 'don't you think the signs in Spanish are kind of undermining your culture? So don't you think that people of color who live in that other neighborhood, don't you think there needs to be more police for people like that,'" he recalled.

"Like these kind of messages really similar stuff to what Trump said on the campaign trail and people would react to it as long as they didn't hear the word racist, as long as they didn't hear, you know, I'm a white nationalist, as long as you didn't say that sort of stuff, these are things that they viscerally reacted to," he continued.

"That is what the white nationalist movement was saying. I would just try to figure out ways to say it that didn't freak them out so much," he explained.

"I got 62% of the vote saying that stuff," Black added.

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