Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump is drawing criticism for refusing to denounce an implicit endorsement from a white supremacist leader. His main rivals, Sens. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio are now using the matter to hammer the billionaire businessman just two days before multiple state primaries that could put him on an irreversible path to the party’s nomination.
Trump was asked on Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” whether he rejected support from David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan 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.”
Well, just so you understand, 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.Donald Trump
Trump was asked on Friday by journalists how he felt about Duke’s support. He said he didn’t know anything about it and curtly said: “All right, I disavow, ok?”
Trump hasn’t always claimed ignorance on Duke’s history. In 2000, he wrote a New York Times op-ed explaining why he abandoned the possibility of running for president on the Reform Party ticket. 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. That is not company I wish to keep.
Trump’s comments sparked a wave of censures just ahead of Super Tuesday – March 1 when 11 states hold Republican primaries. At stake are 595 delegates to the party’s national convention this summer, with 1,237 needed to win the nomination.
On the Democratic side, 865 delegates are up for grabs in Super Tuesday contests in 11 states and American Samoa. It takes 2,383 delegates to gain the Democratic nomination.
Hillary Clinton, who received another burst of momentum Saturday after her lopsided victory in South Carolina, turned her attention to the Republican field on Sunday, all-but-ignoring rival Bernie Sanders during campaign events in Tennessee.
Starting her morning with stops at two Memphis churches, Clinton offered an implicit critique of Trump, issuing a call to unite the nation and asking worshipers to reject “the demagoguery, the prejudice, the paranoia.”
Asked by actor Tony Goldwyn, who later campaigned with Clinton in Nashville, about her thoughts on Duke’s support for Trump, Clinton described it, simply, as “pathetic.”
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