Donald Trump speaking at a gun rights rally in New York in April. Photo: AP

Mother Jones has identified several Republican delegates representing Donald Trump at the Republican National Convention in July who have also affiliated themselves with the radical anti-government Patriot movement. One delegate from Tennessee, David Riden, told Mother Jones that members of the current administration may need to be...well: “The polite word is, eliminated. The harsh word is killed.” In 2016, the lunatic fringe moves ever closer to the mainstream.

Trump has actively courted the resurgent Patriot movement since 2011, with his promotion of the Birther conspiracy theory. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, antigovernment groups have increased sixfold since Obama took office. SPLC estimates there are nearly 1,000 such groups in the United States today, including about 276 armed militia groups.

Riden, a retired nuclear engineer, said he is not himself a member of an armed militia group, but has contacts with one in Tennessee:

There’s only one reason why the Founding Fathers put the Second Amendment…If the federal government were to follow the path of all other governments, at some point it will turn to tyranny against the people. And at that point, when it stops to uphold and abide by the Constitution—and we’re talking about the Supreme Court, Congress, and the executive branch, all three are way off away from the Constitution right now—the people have the right to assemble, bear arms, go to Washington, DC, or wherever necessary, and go into military battle against the government and replace those in government with individuals that will uphold the Constitution. The Constitution should remain, but the people that are abusing it should be, the polite word is, eliminated. The harsh word is killed. And they’re killed by American citizens with weapons. And if people have tanks, assault weapons, if they have bombs—they need to have the weaponry necessary to be able to overthrow the federal government.

Two delegates from Maryland, Collins Bailey and his son Caleb Bailey, have ties to the Patriot movement as well. In 1995, Collins wrote for newsletter associated with the United Sovereigns of America, praising the Founding Fathers in one issue for organizing militias against the British Empire during the American Revolution. “These were men of conviction, men who had ‘No King But King Jesus,’” he wrote.

“The Second Amendment does not address duck hunting,” he wrote on his Myspace page in 2008. “Our Founding Fathers…wisely made many provisions to guard against tyranny, including tyranny from our own government.”

Last month, his son Caleb was arrested on explosives and child pornography charges. At a court hearing, prosecutors described “a vast array of weapons found in an underground bunker.” Caleb was also accused of having “used a minor to engage in sexually explicit conduct” to produce child pornography.