text: A top Tea Party leader derided Barack Obama as “our half white, racist president” in an email to colleagues. 
   
   Mark Williams, the conservative talk radio host who has become a prominent spokesman for the Tea Party Express, sent an email in September — obtained by TPMmuckraker — to other leaders of the group, in which he appeared to be responding to charges of racism against himself. 
   
   Wrote Williams: 
   
   
   
   CNN went over more than seven thousand articles on my site; likely they also listened to the shows archived there too. No doubt they did a Lexis Nexis on me and found thirty years of work by and about me. The best that they could do as a result was string together three quotes, out of context, and throw in a false allegation of me calling Obama a “Nazi”. I was in the streets marching for civil rights while asshole southern sheriffs were swinging nail studded baseball bats at black’s heads, and stood between black kids and even more fucked up northern assholes were throwing rocks and gas bombs at school buses in my hometown during forced busing for deseg. Two things you can always count on: I will defend my record on race to no one (sic), under any circumstances and, I will call out any racist, any time without regard to who they are … and that includes our half white, racist president. 
   
   The Sacramento-based Williams has made frequent media appearances as a spokesman and leader of the Tea Party Express, which was created last year by a GOP consulting firm. He has written in the past that President Obama is “an Indonesian Muslim turned welfare thug and a racist in chief.” 
   
   Late Update: Williams declined to comment to TPMmuckraker. ||||| Produced by HuffPost's Eyes & Ears Citizen Journalism Unit 
   
   Last September Mark Williams, a tour partner with the Tea Party Express, referred to President Obama as "our half white, racist president." 
   
   In a September email obtained by Talking Points Memo, Williams angrily responded to what he calls a "false allegation" by CNN that he called President Obama a Nazi. In an apparent attempt to demonstrate he is not racist, Williams claimed to have a strong record on civil rights. He spoke of "marching for civil rights while asshole southern sheriffs were swinging nail-studded bats at blacks's heads..." 
   
   On September 14, 2009, Mark Williams admitted to CNN's Anderson Cooper that he referred to "Mubarak Hussein Obama" as a Nazi: 
   
   COOPER: But wait Mark, you're actually the one who called President Obama Nazi. WILLIAMS: I didn't call Barack Obama a Nazi. COOPER: Yes, he's on your list, on your Web site of like 21st century Nazis. You have his name. WILLIAMS: We've got the philosophy of fascism and national socialism at work here. Of course we do. COOPER: No, no but you have the president's name, although it's a derivation that's not his actually name, it's a name it's kind of a negative. WILLIAMS: Mubarak Hussein Obama. COOPER: Right, that's what's you call him on your Website. You're the one who's using the term Nazi. 
   
   Tea Party Express, a series of nationwide anti-Obama bus tours, is frequently decried as "astroturf", or fake grassroots, by other aspects of the Tea Party movement, notably the Tea Party Patriots, due to its associations with Our Country Deserves Better PAC, which is run out of the Republican strategy firm Russo Marsh. 
   
   Williams acts as a spokesman for Tea Party Express. 
   
   Robin Stublen, a leader of the Tea Party Patriots, told HuffPost in an email, "Mark Williams is not someone I would want being my spokesman. He comes off as an arrogant, self promoting, egotistical jerk. In politics, people like Mark Williams are a dime a dozen, even when you factor in inflation." 
   
   Williams concluded his September email by inexplicably refusing to defend himself:
target: – Leading Tea Partier Martin Williams labeled President Obama a "half-white" racist in an email to other Tea Party Express leaders unearthed by TPM. Williams appears to be responding to accusations of racism himself in the email, which refers to a CNN interview in which Anderson Cooper made "false allegations" that he had called Obama a Nazi. In the email, Williams claims to have a strong civil rights record and, apparently jumbling his words, writes: "I will defend my record on race to no one under any circumstances." Williams' Tea Party Express branch has been slammed as "astroturf" by other factions of the movement. "Williams is not someone I would want being my spokesman," a leader of the Tea Party Patriots wrote to the Huffington Post. "He comes off as an arrogant, self promoting, egotistical jerk."