Trump in hot water over ‘white supremacist call’

Leesburg / AP

Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump is drawing criticism for refusing to denounce an implicit endorsement from a white supremacist leader, with his main rivals, Sens. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, using the matter to hammer the billionaire businessman just two days before multiple state primaries 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?” Trump told host Jake Tapper. “I don’t know anything about what you’re even talking about with white supremacy or white supremacists.”
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 on 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 worshippers 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.”
Clinton’s South Carolina victory was fueled by an 84-16 advantage among African-Americans, a key Democratic constituency that will also play a dominant role in several Super Tuesday states in the South.
Sanders acknowledged getting “decimated” in South Carolina, though he promised in an ABC interview to continue his campaign against what he describes as a political and economic oligarchy.
He avoided mentioning his huge South Carolina loss at a rally before more than 6,000 cheering people at an Oklahoma City convention center.
The latest shake up in the Republican race comes as attention shifts to the South, with about a half dozen states in the region holding contests on Tuesday.
Trump holds commanding leads across the region, with the exception of Cruz’s home state of Texas, a dynamic that puts tremendous pressure on Rubio and Cruz as they try to outlast each other and derail Trump.