The concern among Republican leaders appeared to grow in light of Trump’s refusal to immediately disavow former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke’s support.
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“The harsher reality is that the next GOP nominee will be a man who refused to condemn the Ku Klux Klan and one of its most infamous Grand Wizards when telling the ugly truth wouldn’t have cost him a single vote”, Scarborough said.
Trump was asked on CNN’s “State of the Union” whether he rejected support from the former KKK Grand Dragon and other white supremacists after Duke told his radio followers this week that a vote against Trump was equivalent to ‘treason to your heritage’.
After the broadcast, amid a torrent of criticism, Trump tweeted out his answer to a similar question during a Friday news conference – he said then he didn’t know about Duke’s endorsement, but “I disavow, OK?”
Given a straighforward opportunity to disavow the most unsafe brand of hatred in American history, the man who has declared, “I’m, like, a really smart person” couldn’t do it.
After taking fire from all sides of the political spectrum for not condemning an endorsement from a white supremacist leader, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump blamed the incident on a “very bad earpiece” used in a cable news interview. To say you don’t know about the Ku Klux Klan? “All I know is that white supremacist groups have no place in our society and clearly not in the Republican Party”.
Rubio has embraced some of Trump’s bar brawl tactics with apparent relish since a debate last week, smiling broadly when his shift to offense was greeted with claps, laughter and cheers. Trump is the frontrunner for the Republican nomination overall, but he performs especially well among people who think that the South should have won the Civil War, that the Confederate flag should be flying over South Carolina’s state capitol and who disapprove of President Lincoln’s executive action to free the slaves. Instead, Trump’s sin was failing to, once endorsed by Duke, put his foot down and state, unequivocally, that the KKK and its associated racism are bad. I mean, I don’t know what group you’re talking about.
Hank Myers, a Republican city council member from Redmond City, Wash., said, “Trump, to me, is a clown”. He wrote of an “underside” and “fringe element” of the party, concluding, “I leave the Reform Party to David Duke, Pat Buchanan and Lenora Fulani”. “I taught my two little ones you don’t lie and make things up…” “Many of these very people who may identify with rhetoric from David Duke have gone on social media to support Donald Trump”, she notes.
Trump’s campaign said at the time the candidate “has disavowed all Super PACs offering their support and continues to do so”. And I just don’t know anything about him.
Rubio had asked Haley to speak on his behalf as he lost his voice, but he then launched into a lengthy stump speech full of attacks on Trump.
For Republicans like Heye though, the most recent dust-up only serves to raise further concern about the direction a Trump-led GOP, which has grown increasingly more likely in recent weeks, would head. “OK, all right. I disavow, OK?” he said. Trump says he’s already shared his personal financial details in separate disclosure forms.
Trump also said he has no plans to release his tax returns, despite pressure from Cruz and Rubio, because IRS audits are ongoing.
“The minute he becomes our nominee, the press, the Democrats, and all these groups will descend on him like the hounds of hell and they are going to rip him apart”, Rubio said.
Trump initially asked a female protester, “Are you from Mexico?”
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And even Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, fresh from a strong win in SC, has started turning her focus on him.
