On the same day, Trump was asked about his use of the word ‘nationalism’ during rallies and attacked the question as ‘racist’

A white nationalist with ties to violent extremism announced on Twitter that he had visited the White House, even as Donald Trump decried as “racist” a reporter’s question about the president’s recent claim that he was a “nationalist”.

Patrick Casey, the executive director of a white nationalist group called Identity Evropa, which helped to plan the deadly 2017 Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, VA in which a counter-protester was murdered, tweeted a picture of himself on the grounds of the White House.

The tweet – showing a picture of Casey on White House grounds, with the words “Evropa has landed at the White House!” – was posted on Wednesday but it is not clear whether the pictures were taken simultaneously.

Patrick Casey (@PatrickCaseyIE) Evropa has landed at the White House! pic.twitter.com/nlExBhNP4V

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, told the Guardian in response to a question about what Casey was doing at the White House that he had been on a tour.

In an emailed statement she said: “He was one of more than 25,000 people who came to the White House Fall Garden Tour, which is open to the public. Free tickets are made available to anyone who wants to attend.”

Casey is not a stealth figure in the white nationalist movement. In October he told NBC News that he was on a mission to “take over the GOP as much as possible”. He has also attended the Conservative Political Action conference, a mainstream gathering of conservative activists that takes place in Washington.

Casey did not respond to a request for comment over email or on Twitter.

A description of the White House Fall Garden Tour found online said the tours this year took place on October 20 and October 21. It said the tour allowed visitors to “discover the beauty of the South Lawn of the White House. The Jacqueline Kennedy Garden, Rose Garden, and the White House Kitchen Garden”. Tickets were available for free and were distributed by the National Park Service, according to the White House website.

Most White House tours require visitors to undergo a basic background check, and visitors must submit their full legal name, date of birth, Social Security number, and country of citizenship.

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According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Identity Evropa was involved in planning the rally of far-right extremists last year that resulted in the death of Heather Heyer, who was killed after a suspect drove his car into a group of counter-protesters. A 21-year-old man named James Alex Fields was charged with first-degree murder and committing a federal hate crime, among 30 other charges.

Casey’s organization has sought to distance itself from the Charlottesville rally and insists that they are part of the “identitarian” movement and not racist.

But in a 2018 interview with Brittany Pettibone, Casey said his group did not believe America had to be 100% white, but that “America isn’t going to be America” if there isn’t a “European-American super-majority”. According to the SPLC, the group was founded by an Iraq war veteran, Nathan Damigo, and is active on college campuses, where it is part of the alt-right effort to recruit white men and “transform them into the fashionable new face of white nationalism”. Damigo has said he was influenced by David Duke, the white supremacist former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan who supports Trump.

The president was asked by PBS reporter Yamiche Alcindor on Wednesday whether his use of the word “nationalism” at rallies before Tuesday’s midterm election was a dog whistle for “white nationalism”. Trump attacked the question, calling it racist and accused the journalist of insulting him.

Additional reporting by Lois Beckett