White nationalist Trump backer stopping anti-McMullin robocalls

A white supremacist supporting Donald Trump says he will cease robocalls in Utah portraying Independent presidential candidate Evan McMullin as gay.

William Johnson wrote in a letter to reporters Wednesday that he had “disabled” the robocalls that went out this week, ending the campaign “immediately,” according to The Daily Beast.

{mosads}Johnson had launched a campaign on Monday calling McMullin a “closeted homosexual.”

He said Wednesday that he went after McMullin, who is a single Mormon, due to his marital status because “[t]he white birth rate is so astonishingly low that Western Civilization will soon cease to exist.”

“I am sorry for the mean-spirited message and humbly retract its contents,” Johnson said, adding that Trump’s “campaign has repudiated my robocalls and many people from Utah and beyond have excoriated me for it as well.”

The white nationalist compared his “heartfelt apology” to the one Trump offered for his past “locker room talk,” referring to Republican nominee’s 2005 comments about groping and kissing women without their consent.

Johnson was initially named a Trump delegate to the Republican National Convention in July. He resigned before the event when Trump’s campaign said he had been named in error.

McMullin has presented himself as a conservative alternative to Trump and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

Trump leads by about 6 points in Utah, a socially conservative state with a significant Mormon population, while McMullin and Clinton draw roughly the same amount of support, according to the RealClearPolitics polling index.