Here’s what’s going on with Trump’s KKK, David Duke stumble — VIDEO
Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio is blasting rival Donald Trump on Monday for his refusal to disavow former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke, after the Republican front-runner blamed the incident on a bad earpiece.
“I don’t care how bad the earpiece is, Ku Klux Klan comes through pretty clearly,” Rubio said during a rally in Tennessee.
Trump was asked earlier why he did not disavow the former grand wizard’s endorsement on CNN. The billionaire businessman said he was unable to hear the question due to a bad earpiece.
“I don’t mind disavowing David Duke,” Trump told NBC’s “Today” show. “I disavowed David Duke the day before at a press conference. They were there, CNN was there, and they gave me a lousy earpiece.”
The business mogul was endorsed by the former Klan leader on Thursday.
Ohio governor and fellow presidential candidate John Kasich disavowed White supremacists on CNN Monday when asked about Trump’s response.
“I don’t know what’s in his head,” Kasich told New Day’s Alisyn Camerota. ” All I know is that white supremacist groups have no place in our society and clearly not in the Republican Party.”
Rubio and Trump are in the midst of an escalating war of words, as a result of Rubio’s attacks on Trump during Thursday night’s debate.
JOE SCARBOROUGH CHANGES GEARS
MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, who has been criticized for being too favorable toward Donald Trump, said Monday that the GOP frontrunner’s failure to disavow the support of former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke disqualified him from being president.
On Monday, the “Morning Joe” co-host lit into Trump for failing to condemn the Klan and Duke, the former KKK “grand wizard” who has effectively endorsed Trump. In an interview with CNN’s “State Of The Union” on Sunday, Trump said he “didn’t know anything about David Duke.”
“The Republican frontrunner’s failure to provide what should have been a simple answer has raised even more disturbing questions about the man who is on course to lock down the GOP’s nomination for president,” Scarborough wrote in the first edition of his new column for The Washington Post.
“Sunday’s distressing performance is just the latest in a string of incidents that suggest to critics that Donald Trump is using bigotry to fuel his controversial campaign,” he wrote.
On Monday’s edition of “Morning Joe,” Scarborough called Trump’s move “disqualifying.”
JOHN OLIVER CRITICIZES ‘DONALD DRUMPF’
Comedian John Oliver took direct aim at Donald Trump Sunday night. Or maybe it was Donald Drumpf.
The host of HBO’s Last Week Tonight took a hard look at Trump’s presidential campaign Sunday, taking shots at everything from the Trump family’s ancestral name, which he said was once Drumpf, to Trump’s campaign funding, his business record, his support by former Klu Klux Klan leader David Duke and his chances of being elected.
Here’s some highlights from his attacks on Trump.
Oliver had great fun with the Drumpf name, which is what one biographer said the family’s original name was, before it morphed into something much more marketable.
Oliver said he had filed paperwork to trademark the name Drumpf, that he now owned the Web site DonaldJDrumpf.com, and that the site had a program on it that allows users to replace the word Trump with Drumpf anywhere it appears on their browser.
“Stop and take a moment to imagine how you would feel if you just met a guy named Donald Drumpf, a litigious serial liar with a string of broken business ventures and the support of a former Klan leader he can’t decide whether or not to condemn,” Oliver said. “Would you think he would make a good president, or is the spell now somewhat broken?”
