I have to respectfully disagree on this one...IMO, the question was a setup...especially the introduction using the ADL. As many know, groups like this and SPLC have been known to include many legitimate organizations that a rational person would not remotely qualify as a “supremacist” organization. Recall the Minutemen were smeared as a supremacist organization and ultimately ceased to be.
I’ll give Trump partial credit for not answering full throttle on this, especially the first part...I suppose the KKK question should have been a grandslam, but for some reason, maybe he thought he’d be disavowing the hundreds of undercover FBI agents that are “in” the KKK?
TAPPER: ...I guess the question from the Anti-Defamation League is even if you don’t know about their endorsement, there are these groups and individuals endorsing you. Would you just say unequivocally you condemn them and you don’t want their support?
TRUMP: Well, I have to look at the group. I mean, I don’t know what group you’re talking about. You wouldn’t want me to condemn a group that I know nothing about. I’d have to look. If you would send me a list of the groups, I will do research on them and certainly I would disavow if I thought there was something wrong.
TAPPER: The Ku Klux Klan?
TRUMP: There are groups in there that are totally fine and it would be very unfair. So give me a list of the groups and I’ll let you know.
TAPPER: OK, I mean I’m just talking about David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan here, but...
TRUMP: I don’t know anything — honestly, I don’t know David Duke. I don’t believe I’ve ever met him, I’m pretty sure I didn’t meet him, and I just don’t know anything about him.
Thank you for the respectfully. Your comment is well put.
The important issue to me is that trump was asked a simple easy question which he wiffed. Then went on to contradict his own statements.
Since there was no list given save the KKK it would have been most easy to just say “of course any white supremacist group any racist group is not whom I what support from especially the kkk” but that is not what he did instead he tried to turn a simple question with a simple answer into something nefarious. In the process he put his veracity in question (I have questioned it often but now we have an audio clip of him contradicting himself on national broad cast)