Late last month, in an interview with Republican frontrunner Donald Trump, CNN host Jake Tapper asked the candidate whether he would disavow an endorsement from longtime Ku Klux Klan leader and white nationalist celebrity David Duke. Trump declined. "I don't know anything about David Duke," he said. Moments later, he added, "I know nothing about white supremacists."
Trump has since walked back his comments, blaming his hesitance to condemn the Klan on a "bad earpiece." The matter has now been filed away into the ever-growing archives of volatile statements Trump has made about race and ethnicity during the current election cycle—a list that includes kicking off his presidential campaign by calling Mexicans rapists, calling for the "'total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States," and commenting that perhaps a Black Lives Matter protester at one of his rallies "should have been roughed up."
But the particulars of the David Duke incident call to mind yet another news story, one that suggests that Trump's father, the late New York real estate titan Fred Trump, once wore the robe and hood of a Klansman. (more...)
H/T to Spitfire List
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