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Trump’s David Duke Denials
David Suderman, Senior Editor at Reason Magazine, is wondering why Trump pretends to not to have any knowledge of supporter David Duke, when in 2000 Trump specifically pointed Duke out as the reason why Trump wouldn’t ever run on a ‘Reform Party’ ticket.
Trump supporters: What say you?
Donald Trump Repeatedly Refuses to Disavow Support From Former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke
Trump claims he doesn’t know who Duke is. He did in 2000.
Over the course of his campaign, Donald Trump has managed to attracted openly racist supporters, including, most recently, David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan (KKK) grand wizard who declared last week that voting against Trump would be “treason to your heritage.”
So how does Trump feel about Duke’s endorsement? Asked by CNN’s Jake Tapper this morning whether he would disavow Duke’s endorsement and the KKK, the GOP [frontrunner – FIFY Suderman] repeatedly declined to do, saying, instead, that he just didn’t know much about David Duke.
Here’s what Trump said:
I don’t know anything about David Duke, OK? I don’t know anything about what you’re even talking about with white supremacy or white supremacists. So I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know — did he endorse me or what’s going on? Because I know nothing about David Duke. I know nothing about white supremacists. And so you’re asking me a question that I’m supposed to be talking about people that I know nothing about.
When Tapper followed up, clearly noting Duke’s connection to white supremacy and the Ku Klux Klan, Trump again responded that he would “have to look at the group” before weighing in further.
But Trump certainly knew who David Duke was in 2000. As The New York Times reported at the time, Trump declined to be a presidential candidate on the Reform Party ticket explicitly because of Duke’s Klan connections:
Published in GeneralMr. Trump painted a fairly dark picture of the Reform Party in his statement, noting the role of Mr. Buchanan, along with the roles of David Duke, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, and Lenora Fulani, the former standard-bearer of the New Alliance Party and an advocate of Marxist-Leninist politics.
“The Reform Party now includes a Klansman, Mr. Duke, a neo-Nazi, Mr. Buchanan, and a communist, Ms. Fulani,” he said in his statement. “This is not company I wish to keep.” [via Justin Green]
Indeed, Trump seemed to know who David Duke was last Friday, when he gave a flip disavowal of the former Klansman’s support: “David Duke endorsed me? OK, alright. I disavow, OK?”
Since then, Trump appears to have decided to play dumb about Duke and the Klan, and to pretend that he knows nothing about them at all. That’s a lie, and it’s a lie that tells you plenty about the kind of campaign that Trump is running.
Not today, I just mean the kind-of positive things he’s said in the past. I think you’ve probably seen already where he sort-of praised Kim Jong-Un?
Again, it’s not like he quite says evil is good. He just says it’s strength, and that he admires strength and despises weakness.
If that’s what he has in mind, give me weakness. Washington has enough power anyway.
Gorbachev deserves the most credit for not trying to keep the USSR together with violence.
These people are online supporting Trump. It is disgusting. A Republican party run by Donald Trump is not one that anyone should try to save. Just let it go.
I just want an Independent ticket to vote for. So can we, someone, please start a new Party untainted by the racists and the purists?
I’m done with Republicans as the Party is now. There is a segment within it that is both sane and conservative.
I would gladly be in a Republican Party led by Cruz and Rubio. Brains and heart, not the weird heart of Kasich… what is up with all the hugging? What is that? That is just odd behavior, no thank you.
Put Rubio and Cruz on a ticket, call it anything, and let me vote for something in good conscience.
Hillary is going to win, because Republicans don’t deserve to win. Allowing Trump to continue has taken all the high ground.
There is no high ground now. Just choosing between the least insane one in the race.
Why does anybody care what David Duke does or who he endorses? If it was not for a bunch of people getting their knickers in a bunch and hand wringing every election season about this idiot I would never hear about him. Him and his KKK is are such a relic of the past that you have to send search teams out to find them and the only reason anybody ever bothers to search them up is so some media hack can play gotcha games with candidates they do not like. Seriously, grow up people.
Selling your soul to win is worse than losing. If no one will stand on principle no one will stand with the Republican Party.
Not so. They are all over the internet, and in Twitter… telling us white women have sold out the white race and all kinds of horrible stuff.
One yesterday was saying how the “mex-cuban” people were taking all their jobs and marrying all their women….
This isn’t happening in Germany 1833. It is here now inside the Trump campaign.
I am on the internet and the only place I have seen them mentioned is on here. Maybe you need to hang out in better places and skim your friend lists / followers down to rational people.
Germany had white supremacist in 1833? Really?
Today’s news reports several people were stabbed after a clash broke out between supporters and protesters at a KKK rally in California.
Street fighting between political extremists is what Obama, Holder, et al., and now Trump have brought us to.
Weimar-ish.
I see nothing to make me believe Trump would do any better than Hillary. Nothing. I see much that makes me think he will be worse. He is used to buying power, and will expect others to bribe him. Trump would sell the court to the highest bidder.
I think the Court is lost because of Trump.
Besides, abortion is already legal. Gay marriage is already legal.
We need to try to keep the Senate if that is even possible.
Which means we need all Republicans to vote down ticket. Give us another ticket… Independent? A reason to show up and vote to keep the Senate. The Senate confirms. It at least gives us some voice to deny the very worst nominees.
What a sad pathetic little spectacle.
Barry Obama sat in the pews of Reverend Wright’s racist church for two decades- and the GOP said nothing. The democrats right now are happy to have support from a racist group calling itself The National Organization for the Race– what raza might that be, I wonder? The New Black Panther Party gets support and protection from Obama’s DoJ, and the black lives matter protesters are enraged if anyone says all lives matter.
But the real problem in all this is Trump, who didn’t condemn the left’s go-to GOP racist with sufficient alacrity today, despite condemning him thoroughly before.
Pitiful.
This is yet another example of the sheer political irrelevance of the GOP. It has nothing to say about the never-ending racism of the left- but is quick to attack its own supporters for suppposed racism.
Much like the left does, in fact.
Again, pitiful.
Well no, you just told us all about what he’d do.
It’s fascinating that Trump-haters can predict in great detail every hypothetical failure of a possible Trump administration, but couldn’t predict that candidates like Bob Dole and Mitt Romney would lose.
I humbly suggest your crystal balls are all seriously out of calibration.
Of course we don’t care about Duke and the sociopaths who espouse those views. Reread the article. The issue is how Trump lied about it. He has a very distant relationship with his own memories and truths that are easily found from searching his own words. He says he doesn’t condone single payer, but was supporting it in recent debates. He says whatever he thinks he should say in the moment without any care about his previous statements.
He is conveniently inconsistent, which needs to be discussed. He says the things that people want to hear, but has no substance to back his words up with actions.
Trump tweeted, earlier today:
“As I stated at the press conference on Friday regarding David Duke–I disavow.”
I actually heard that report yesterday. That Trump had disavowed the David Duke endorsement. Yesterday.
If the report I heard yesterday was correct, and if Trump is correct in now saying that he disavowed David Duke yesterday, then what was this brilliant man playing at today?
Absolutely. Difficult to imagine Trump understanding or appreciating that.
Also difficult to imagine that Trump has ever studied about what happened to lead to the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the role that both Reagan and John Paul II played in their discussions with Gorbachev. Trump may have been too distracted at the time. He was busy sleeping with other men’s wives around this timeframe — or so he had bragged.
He was asked this question on the day this happened.
Sash, don’t walk out for a couple weeks yet. This isn’t over. We might have that party still. If we nominate Trump, I’m there with you. But I’m not giving up til it’s over, not while I can do something about it.
Get a little of the coverage of Rubio’s rallies here in Virginia. As his spokesman pointed out on twitter, the media just chose to release — today — polls from before the debate. We still don’t have any idea what impact the debate and the new offensive have had. I talked to a lot of people lately who detest Trump… don’t give up on them yet!
Something else is going on, too, and we don’t know how big it is yet.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, our supporters in places like South Vietnam and Iraq have been abandoned to be murdered, and Iran casually seizes a couple of small boats and makes US sailors do tricks for the camera.
But once again the problem is Trump, who didn’t offer the usual impotent condemnation of an action he could do nothing about decades ago.
I note also- because it seems relevant to reality- that the murderous Chinese regime is still in power, and the US has done plenty of business with it, murders and all.
The USSR has vanished- and the US is still going after the remnants.
Xennady, where were you in 2008 and 2012? The Right screamed from mountaintops Obama’s associations with Reverend Wright and Bill Ayers and the double standards were everywhere. The fact the MSM didn’t carry the water is another story.
Read the comments here. and elsewhere on Ricochet why Conservatives are terrified about Trump. He has gone from an entertaining sideshow spectacle to the greatest gift Hillary and the Left will ever have.
It’s easy to call for a new party. In the meantime the Left will control the government for the next generation and America as we know it will no longer exist.
So is anything preventing the other candidates from defending the party? It is supposed to be one of Trump’s jobs, especially as the front runner.
Hah! We’re at the point at which brain stem level self preservation is our best hope.
Doesn’t sound quite right in a political ad, but then again, there’d be no point in putting it there.
The folks that are supporting Trump do so mostly because he ‘says what people think’. Political correctness has given us Trump. But I argue the same reasons people vote for Trump is comparable to the same intellectual level people vote for Hillary: simply because she’s a woman. These voters are not concerned with the micro. They don’t care about the issues with Trump, because he doesn’t give anything specific beyond grand overtures so there is nothing to actually point to. Winning, huge, success, and other Trumpisms are not a reason to vote for a President.
Any nominated candidate needs moderates. Trump cannot win. Most Republicans I know (anecdotally) simply will not vote. Argue with me on that, fine. But the further we go into this cycle, the more apparent it is that a vote for Trump is a vote for Hillary.
Xennady, I’m going to vote for someone who has the basic moral clarity to call evil by its name.
I’m not a Trump hater, I made a guess and confessed I disn’t know what he would do. I simply don’t like anything he says about policy. nor do I like his petty vindictive approach to critics. I’m fine with him building and doing reality TV. What bothers me is a population that voted for Obama and will vote for Trump. It’s sad. By the way I knew Dole and McCain would lose. I thought Romney might win but as always we underestimate fraud and don’t follow up when it’s obvious.
I have heard passionate criticism of everything you list, both here on Ricochet and elsewhere. Criticism of Trump does not imply contentment with and acceptance of other horrors.
Sorry, David. I didn’t notice your post before putting it in a comment elsewhere.
“The Power of Strength.” The title of the Donald’s next blockbuster book, no doubt.
David: “The folks that are supporting Trump do so mostly because he ‘says what people think’.”
I suspect that is accurate and, if it is, it is incredibly dispiriting. What it means is that a substantial segment of the right actually is all the horrible things the left claims we all are. Donald Trump is running as a New York liberal’s caricature of a conservative… and he’s winning.
I’m not giving up hope yet, but I am drinking more.
Trump is Hitler. Trump is Mussolini. It’s as if I’ve wandered into the Democratic Underground.
Trump is Spode.