Well, that’s awkward: A white supremacist who made headlines worldwide for plotting to take over a town in North Dakota received the results of a DNA test – and the results say he’s 14 percent black.
And this all happened while cameras were rolling.
Craig Cobb, 61, who has tried to create a white enclave in tiny Leith, N.D., submitted a DNA sample to Trisha Goddard’s talk show and got the results back during a recent taping.
The UK’s Daily Mail newspaper got a copy of the segment of the show, which is nationally syndicated by NBC, and posted video of the moment Goddard read out the results to Cobb in front of a studio audience.
“Eighty-six percent European and,” Goddard said, pausing as the audience started to cheer before she continued, “14 percent sub-Saharan African!”
The audience erupted in cheers and laughs as a grinning Cobb began to protest.
“Wait a minute, wait a minute, hold on, just wait a minute,” Cobb said. “This is called ‘statistical noise.’ “
“Sweetheart, you have a little black in you,” Goddard said.
“Listen, I’ll tell you this, oil and water don’t mix!”
“So, hey,” Goddard said while rising, and then moved to fist-bump a reticent Cobb, “bro!” Cobb declined to fist-bump.
Cobb told the Bismarck Tribune on Monday that he doubted the validity of the test and said he planned to take up to three more DNA tests and publish the results.
“I had no idea, or I wouldn’t have gone and done that, and I still don’t believe it,” Cobb told the Tribune. “I’ll find out with real science and get the whole DNA map.”
Cobb’s plot to take over Leith might not have been taken so seriously by activists and officials in North Dakota if Leith weren’t so small. Cobb, a Leith resident, bought up several properties and invited other supremacists to move to the town. The Tribune reported in late October that three other male supremacists, with two children, were living in Cobb’s house.
The town had a population of 16 residents as of the 2010 Census, making a political takeover possible with only a handful of new residents – which Cobb had called for in an announcement made on a supremacist message board in May 2012.
“For starters, we could declare a Mexican illegal invaders and Israeli Mossad/IDF spies no-go zone,” Cobb wrote in the announcement, adding that he hoped new residents would always fly at least one “racialist” banner, such as a Nazi flag. “If leftist journalists or antis come and try to make trouble, they just might break one of our local ordinances and would have to be arrested by our town constable. See?”
Cobb’s plans have since run awry of anti-supremacy activists across the state and of local health officials who have targeted Cobb’s run-down properties for code violations.
Bobby Harper, a black resident in Leith, told the Tribune he thought Cobb’s DNA results were hilarious.
“I knew there was one other black person in town,” Harper told the newspaper. “Is he going to want to kick his own self out of town and discriminate against himself?”
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