Trump VP running mate Mike Pence says he has no idea why he keeps getting asked to comment on Trump supporter David Duke. A closer look at Duke and a visit to his white supremacist Stormfront website might clarify things. It’s not a pleasant trip, but America needs to know just how deplorable these people are and why they are supporting Donald Trump for President. But first about Mike Pence and his strange response to a deplorable supporter.
Mike Pence speaking about David Duke on Tuesday:
“For all the world I have no idea why this man keeps coming up. I mean Donald Trump and I have denounced David Duke repeatedly," Pence said, but added he still wasn't going to call Duke any names. "I believe that civility is essential in a vibrant democracy”.
Says the man who chose to be number two to Donald Trump, the master of politically incorrect civility.
Let’s respond to the concern of Mike Pence as to “why this man keeps coming up”.
For one, Duke is now running to join Pence’s party in the Senate.
David Duke announces that he is running as a Republican for the Louisiana US Senate slot. July 22, 2016
Duke also supports Trump for President, because he believes Trump is advancing the white supremacist cause. Or in his words:
I’m not saying I endorse everything about Trump. In fact, I haven’t formally endorsed him. But I do support his candidacy, and I support voting for him as a strategic action. I hope he does everything we hope he will do . . .
Voting against Donald Trump at this point, is really treason to your heritage.
Over the years Duke has been a Nazi Party member, a Klansman, a “white nationalist” and in 1989 an elected Republican member of the Louisiana House of Representatives. In 1990 he ran as a Republican for the U.S. Senate in Louisiana. While he lost, he still pulled 43% percent of the statewide vote. David Duke has been around Republican Politics a long time. And he drew at least one prominent Republican into his orbit when he got Louisiana State Representative Steve Scalise to speak at his white supremacist organization, EURO — European-American Unity and Rights Organization — in 2002. We found about it only in 2014 when a Louisiana blogger named Lamar White, Jr., waded through the white supremacist Stormfront website and found the evidence. By this point Steve Scalise was ensconced in Washington as U.S. Representative and Majority Whip for the Republicans. That’s right, the third most powerful Republican in the House was close enough to white supremacy to speak to one of their more notorius gatherings. Here’s the alt-right blog account on Stormfront that created the scandal:
EURO’s recent national convention held in the greater New Orleans area was a convergence of ideas represented by Americans from diverse geographical regions like California, Texas, New Jersey and the Carolina’s. This indicates that concerns held are pervasive in every sovereign state and Republic alike, within an increasingly diminishing view of where America stands on individual liberty for whites.
In addition to plans to implement tactical strategies that were discussed, the meeting was productive locally as State Representative, Steve Scalise, discussed ways to oversee gross mismanagement of tax revenue or “slush funds” that have little or no accountability.
Representative Scalise brought into sharp focus the dire circumstances pervasive in many important, under-funded needs of the community at the expense of graft within the Housing and Urban Development Fund, an apparent give-away to a selective group based on race.
It was a huge scandal. This was the reaction of a writer for The Hill.
Buried in the headlines about the new Congress, and among the furious efforts of the Republican leadership's attempt to change the subject, was the reprehensible case of Rep. Steve Scalise(R-La.). As you might have heard, Scalise has now admitted to giving a speech earlier in his political career to a white supremacist group founded by former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke. Trolling for votes in Louisiana, Scalise thought it was a good idea to speak to one of the most vile hate groups in America.
Duke got a lot of air-time as the public was reminded, yet again, who David Duke is. (When it comes to Duke, the American public has the memory of a gnat).
But Scalise escaped. He apologized for the appearance calling it a mistake and amazingly enough saved his job — despite boasting earlier in his career that he was “David Duke without the baggage”.
Now I could discuss that as a deplorable incident all by itself. But my main point is this: the Scalise-Duke connection is relevant to Pence’s words.
For all the world I have no idea why this man keeps coming up.
Mike Pence served in the U.S. House from 2000 until 2012, when he became Governor of Indiana. Scalise was elected to the House in 2008 — they worked together in the Republican Caucus for four years. This is what Scalise said when Trump picked Pence as his running mate:
I served with Mike. He is a real energetic guy, one of the leading conservatives in the House when he was with us, and he is somebody that's going to help work with Congress to get this country back on track, which is so needed.
The degrees of separation between Mike Pence and David Duke? Two. Pence knows Scalise. Scalise spoke at Duke’s white supremacist gathering. It’s very dishonest for Pence to pretend he doesn’t know why Duke’s support of Trump is something that taints their campaign when it had already tainted the career of his House buddy, Steve Scalise.
Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah gets it. When Pence went to Capitol HIll to promote Trump this week, Lee confronted him.
Mr. Lee pressed the governor on his reluctance to denounce Mr. Duke and the so-called alt-right movement more explicitly, stressing “that Republicans must identify David Duke’s racism as deplorable,” according to Conn Carroll, a spokesman for Mr. Lee.
But more importantly, what was David Duke’s take-away of Pence’s reluctance to engage in name-calling? This from Duke speaking to Buzzword:
“It’s good to see an individual like Pence and others start to reject this absolute controlled media. The truth is that the Republican Party in Louisiana — I received the vast majority of Republican votes for United States senator before and for governor before that in my state. The truth is the Republican Party is big tent. I served in the Republican caucus. I was in the Republican caucus in the legislature. I had a perfect Republican voting record. It’s ridiculous that they attack me because of my involvement in that nonviolent Klan four decades ago.”
The Klan was nonviolent four decades ago? That’s news to those who saw people gunned down by the KKK in Greensboro, North Carolina in 1979.
The media has a memory hole that enables the violent racists in our midst.
So bear with me while I get into some truly unpleasant stuff. I occasionally read Stormfront, where David Duke currently blogs. Its a website that bills itself as “White Nationalist” but it is home to hard-core Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan and assorted other white supremacists. You see amazingly vile stuff, its like doing a dive into a sewer. No, I take that back. I’ve cleaned out sewer pipes. This is worse.
When Hillary attacked the alt-right, they knew she was talking about them.
I read Stormfront so you don’t have to. I read it because we have to know what they are doing and saying and confront them before their words become violence. I grew up in Mississippi when the KKK murdered its opponents, torched black churches and bombed Jewish synagogues. I learned that they don’t go away if you ignore them.
There was a Trump-George Stephanoplous interview on ABC News last January that illustrates the connection between the “alt-right” and the Trump campaign. This is what was said by Trump in that interview.
"You're increasingly being compared to Hitler," ABC News' George Stephanopoulos said during an interview with Trump on "Good Morning America" Tuesday. "Does that give you any pause at all?"
"No," Trump responded, "because what I am doing is no different than what FDR -- FDR's solution for Germans, Italians, Japanese, you know, many years ago."
Stephanopoulos jumped in as Trump kept talking: "So you're for internment camps?"
"This is a president who is highly respected by all," Trump said of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. "He did the same thing -- if you look at what he was doing, it was far worse."
This is how it was interpreted by Stormfront blogger J Civello (this is just a sample, one of tens of thousands of favorable comments about Trump on Stormfront) :
In my opinion it's noteworthy that he didn't bother to condemn Hitler in the interview.
J Civello also included this graphic with his post. Disgusting, but very mild by Stormfront standards.
Stormfront post from December 2015 in support of Trump.
In fairness to Nazis, they actually have real debates with each other. Here is someone replying to J Civello with a different take on Trump.
This is very misleading to suggest that Trump ”doesn't mind being compared to Hitler. Yeah, he said ”no”, but by the context of what he said what he meant was ”I don't care if people compare me to Hitler because I know the comparison isn't valid”, that's what he meant. If Trump actually were to say positive things about the Fuhrer, it would crush his poll numbers, white America is making some progress but they are not ready yet for positive perspectives on the third reich. Undoing decades of brainwashing will not occur with just one election cycle.
Just to drive home the mind-set of these Trump supporters, this is the graphic that accompanies the above post.
Stormfront post from December 2015 about whether Trump was bothered by comparisons to Hitler.
David Duke writes extensively on Stormfront. The above is a tiny sample of the sea he swims in.
Duke says one thing in public on his radio show and to the media, supporting Trump. In private to his Stormfront audience, he has a different message. This is what he wrote in the summer of 2015 (I should first note that the alt-right uses the derogatory word “cuck” to attack establishment Republicans, its a shortened form of “cuckservative”, derived from cukold and conservative):
There are some good things about the Trump campaign. It has propelled the immigration debate and helped us in a number of ways. One thing different and instructive about Trump is that he talks in a manly way that is so alien to the rest of the Republican rabble. However, I don't think he is a real man, he’s just is a better actor than most, probably as good a con man as the biggest conservative phony in the 20th Century" Ronald Reagan.
. . .
Still all that said, the controversy and turmoil surrounding Trump is good for us, as long as we who know the truth don't fall for it . . .
So use all the controversy to wake up more people, to extend the debate on immigration, but know what Trump really is. He is Cuck! All that money and all that fame, But Trump's just a cuck all the same! And prepare for the day that is soon coming where real leaders will emerge from our people who dare to demand freedom for our people from the Jewish Tyrants that are exterminating our people -- wiping our progeny from the face of the Earth. No more compromise, no more cuckholdom...
Says David Duke in Stormfront. The same place that posts cartoons “joking” about the extermination of house pests drawn with the caricature faces that Hitler’s Nazis used for Jews. And the solution for “jewish pests” according to these “alt-right joksters”? Zyklon-B gas in the form of a can of cartoon insect spray.
Deplorable? You bet. The more I hear it, the more I think its the right word to use.
Duke, however, is trying to turn “deplorables” into something to be proud of. He put this on twitter.
David Duke put this fake movie poster on twitter. He is proud to claim the deplorable label.
Pence may think he’s being civil by refusing to drop the D-word on David Duke. I disagree. I think he is allowing an evil to grow and fester in the midst of his political party and our democracy. That is anything but civil. That is truly deplorable.
I have a previous blog on this subject: The Alt-right in pictures — was HIllary’s “basket of deplorables” right or wrong? Vote!
