Story highlights Clovis wrote in a 2011 newsletter that progressives, through the public school system, have been "indoctrinating children" with concepts he said are contrary to America's founding.

Clovis labeled racism as "the most pernicious 'ism,'" and said that then-President Barack Obama "uses his self-identified race as a bludgeon to assault anyone who might disagree with him."

(CNN) Donald Trump's nominee to be the chief scientist for the Department of Agriculture, Sam Clovis, wrote in a 2011 newsletter that progressives, through the public school system, have been "indoctrinating children" with concepts he said are contrary to America's founding, including environmentalism and racism.

Clovis, currently a senior White House adviser to the USDA, made the comments when he was a conservative talk radio host in a 2011 newsletter obtained by CNN's Kfile.

"Through the public education system, in which we still find over 70% of America's children, the progressives have advanced several 'isms' that tend to warp and twist the logic and intellectual development of children essentially held captive eight hours a day in a government-mandated system that has not substantively improved in over 40 years," Clovis wrote in the newsletter.

Clovis singled out environmentalism as the "most pervasive 'ism,"" and said that the goal of the entire environmental movement was the "destruction of capitalism and the redistribution of wealth, not just in America but around the world."

Clovis labeled racism as "the most pernicious 'ism,'" and said that then-President Barack Obama "uses his self-identified race as a bludgeon to assault anyone who might disagree with him."

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