Trump knows nothing about the KKK

[santafe2]

Donald Trump Can’t Disavow the KKK Because It Might Demoralize His Base

Let us dispel with the notion that Donald Trump doesn’t know who David Duke and the KKK are. In 2000, Trump briefly flirted with running for president on the Reform Party ticket, but concluded that the party was too full of extremists. Among them were David Duke, the Louisiana politician and former Grand Wizard of the KKK, right-wing populist Pat Buchannan, and all-purpose fringe figure Lenora Fulani.

“The Reform Party now includes a Klansman, Mr. Duke, a neo-Nazi, Mr. Buchanan, and a communist, Ms. Fulani,” the New York Times quoted Trump saying in a statement. “This is not company I wish to keep.”

How things have changed! On Sunday morning, CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Trump to disavow Duke’s support for his current presidential bid. “I know nothing about David Duke,” Trump replied. “I know nothing about white supremacists. And so you’re asking me a question that I’m supposed to be talking about people that I know nothing about.”

Tapper kept pressing him, but Trump refused to say a negative word about either Duke or the KKK. “I don’t know what group you are talking about, you wouldn’t want me to condemn a group that I know nothing about; I’d have to look,” Trump said. “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, but …”
Tapper interjected, “The Ku Klux Klan?”

Trump continued, “You may have 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.”

“OK, I mean I’m just talking about David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan here, but,” said Tapper.

“I don’t know any—honestly I don’t know David Duke,” replied Trump. “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.”

What’s interesting here is not that Trump is lying, but why he is lying. For most politicians, rejecting the KKK is not a hard call. Trump, however, seems to suspect that doing so will demoralize his base. Given how much white nationalist support he has, he might be right.

Indeed, Trump’s complete mendacity coexists with a twisted sort of honesty about his own motives. He doesn’t pretend to be anything but a bigot and a bully. Sunday, a few hours before refusing to condemn white supremacists, he retweeted @ilduce2016, a Twitter bot created by Gawker’s Ashley Feinberg that posts Mussolini quotes, ascribing them to Trump. (Its avatar is a photo of the Italian fascist sporting Trump’s poufy orange comb-over.) The quote Trump retweeted was, “It is better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep,” followed by the hashtag #MakeAmericaGreatAgain. When Chuck Todd asked Trump about it on Meet The Press, Trump responded, “Mussolini was Mussolini. It’s a very good quote, it’s a very interesting quote. I know who said it, but what difference does it make whether it’s Mussolini or somebody else?”

“You want to be associated with a fascist?” Todd asked. “No, I want to be associated with interesting quotes,” Trump replied. His associations are certainly interesting. And to paraphrase Marco Rubio, it seems like he knows exactly what he’s doing.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slate...e_and_kkk.html

[Ellen Z]

Re: Trump knows nothing about the KKK

What’s interesting here is not that Trump is lying, but why he is lying. For most politicians, rejecting the KKK is not a hard call. Trump, however, seems to suspect that doing so will demoralize his base. Given how much white nationalist support he has, he might be right.

Reporter Evan Osnos has been following white nationalists. Here’s an interview with Terry Gross on their reaction to Trump. Very very interesting.
http://www.npr.org/2015/09/03/437195...n-donald-trump

[vt]

Re: Trump knows nothing about the KKK

Trump is the con artist of the century. He makes Bernie Madoff look like a baby.

Trump is a true con, probably in league with Hillary. His goal is to hijack the Republican party, destroy it's bench, and pave the road for Hillary to win.

He is very close to achieving his goal.

He can't get elected; his negatives are off the chart and the Democrat dirty trick machine will destroy his chances.

Trump gets millions in free publicity because of the advertising he brings to ad starved TV networks. He makes wild claims and lies and seems to turn on his small fanatical army of supporters.

What's in failing to win for Trump? Hundreds of billions of the Trillion that will be spent on replacing and adding to infrastructure over the next 20 years. His companies and his allies will make untold wealth. Hillary and the Democrat real estate cartel will deliver this tribute to the Don for putting them in power permanently.

Republican voters are buying it hook, line, and stinker.

Trump also enhances his brand with an entire new audience of suckers that will willingly buy any scams he can concoct.

He is the political pied piper of the century and it's amazing to watch some intelligent and average people fall for his undisguised scam.

[santafe2]

Re: Trump knows nothing about the KKK

Reporter Evan Osnos has been following white nationalists. Here’s an interview with Terry Gross on their reaction to Trump. Very very interesting.
http://www.npr.org/2015/09/03/437195...n-donald-trump

I suspect this is why the Republican party is working so hard to undo Trump and put Rubio in his place. Like Romney, Trump will carry white voters and almost no one else.

[GRG55]

Re: Trump knows nothing about the KKK

I suspect this is why the Republican party is working so hard to undo Trump and put Rubio in his place. Like Romney, Trump will carry white voters and almost no one else.

That's the thought that came to mind when I was reading the posted material on this thread - how does he (Trump) expect to get elected after alienating immigrants, Mexicans, Muslims, blacks and...

[gnk]

Re: Trump knows nothing about the KKK

Although I was deeply disturbed and disappointed by that interview Trump gave, I have to disagree vt.

This guy's ego is all about taking on the establishment and winning.

Gov Chris Christie endorsed him.

Former AZ Gov. Jan Brewer endorsed him.

And now AL Senator Jeff Sessions.

It's a two pronged approach - winning over the masses, and certain elites. He's crushing the establishment. I think he has many more credible endorsements in the bag, and he strategically pulls one out each time he does something extremely stupid, or the oppositions' attacks stick. Like him or not, he's brilliant. Yet still, everyone is underestimating him.

At the end of the day, many Americans will ask themselves: has the system gotten so rotten and unfair, that it is better to vote for a loose cannon, or stay with the real con artists with a proven track record: the status quo.

Here in Greece, many flocked to Tsipras just for that reason - they saw a sledgehammer (wrongly so, but anyway.) Although Greece is another story, with it's own unique traits. Honestly, I feel more empathy for the lower class American than the poor of Greece. During the boom times in Greece, even many in the lower classes milked the system. In the US, the bottom half is truly at the bottom. Overall, it is better to be poor in the EU than in the US, at least that's been my observation.

[Ellen Z]

Re: Trump knows nothing about the KKK

Two recent essays by John Michael Greer are worth reading for the provocative things they say about Trump.

January 20, 2016
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.c...esentment.html


"The rise of Donald Trump...marks the arrival of a turning point I’ve discussed more than once in these essays already. Like the other turning points whose impending appearance on the stage of the future has been outlined here, it’s not the end of the world....

"To understand what follows, it’s going to be necessary to ask my readers—especially, though not only, those who consider themselves liberals, or see themselves inhabiting some other position left of center in the convoluted landscape of today’s American politics—to set aside two common habits. The first is the reflexive resort to sneering mockery that so often makes up for the absence of meaningful political thought in the US—again, especially but by no means only on the left....

"Trump is anything but stupid. He’s extraordinarily clever, and one measure of his cleverness is the way that he’s been able to lure so many of his opponents into behaving in ways that strengthen his appeal to the voters that matter most to his campaign.... He's figured out that the most effective way to get the wage class to rally to his banner is to get himself attacked, with the usual sort of shrill mockery, by the salary class. The man's worth several billion dollars—do you really think he can't afford to get the kind of hairstyle that the salary class finds acceptable? Of course he can; he's deliberately chosen otherwise, because he knows that every time some privileged buffoon in the media or on the internet trots out another round of insults directed at his failure to conform to salary class ideas of fashion, another hundred thousand wage class voters recall the endless sneering putdowns they've experienced from the salary class and think, "Trump's one of us."

See the complete essay for his analysis of four economic classes in the United States and what's happened to them over the past half-century.... and how that relates to Trump’s current success.
The essay garnered more than 500 intelligent comments within a week. (Usually he gets about 200 comments per week.)



February 24, 2016
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.c...y-clinton.html

"The last couple of weeks in American politics have offered an interesting confirmation of some of the main themes I've discussed on this blog. For that matter, those weeks would have come as no surprise to one of the thinkers whose work has guided these essays since this blog started a decade ago, the philosopher of history Oswald Spengler.

"The reason that a large and growing number of ordinary working Americans are refusing to accept another rehash of the status quo this time around is that their backs are to the wall. That's a situation that comes up reliably at a certain point in the history of every society.... Spengler's historical analysis covers a vast amount of territory, but the point at issue here appears late in the second volume of The Decline of the West, where he sketches out the immediate future of what we call Western industrial civilization and he named the Faustian Culture. His theme was the way that democracies die. He argued that democracy suffers from a lethal vulnerability, which is that it has no meaningful defenses against the influence of money. Since most citizens are more interested in their own personal, short-term advantage than they are in the long-term destiny of their nation, democracy turns into a polite fiction for plutocracy just as soon as the rich figure out how to buy votes, a lesson that rarely takes them long to learn.

"The problem with plutocracy [is that] in the blind obsession with personal gain that drives the plutocratic system, the plutocrats generally lose track of the hard fact that too much profiteering can run the entire system into the ground. A democracy in its terminal years thus devolves into a broken society from which only the narrowing circle of the privileged rich derive any tangible benefit. In due time, those excluded from that circle look elsewhere for leadership.

"The result is what Spengler calls Caesarism: the rise of charismatic leaders who discover that they can seize power by challenging the plutocrats, addressing the excluded majority, and offering the latter some hope that their lot will be improved.... Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders have already demonstrated that rejecting the consensus of America's dominant minority is a ticket to electoral success. [Even if Clinton wins this election] others will follow where Trump and Sanders lead, and sooner or later one of them will triumph."


I’ve never read any Spengler, but I’m adding his book to my to-do list.
　

[BK]

Re: Trump knows nothing about the KKK

I was never a fan of Trumps business tactic.

But, can't we all agree all the major US Politicians and around the world are ego maniacs. I remember well how many iTulip readers thought Hope and Change of Senator Obama was welcomed.

The job requirement for a National Politician is to be an ego maniac or you won't get elected!

[shiny!]

Re: Trump knows nothing about the KKK

I was never a fan of Trumps business tactic.

But, can't we all agree all the major US Politicians and around the world are ego maniacs. I remember well how many iTulip readers thought Hope and Change of Senator Obama was welcomed.

The job requirement for a National Politician is to be an ego maniac or you won't get elected!

I'd label a lot of high-level politicians as psychopaths.

I used to sit on a citizen advisory board for my city. A few years into my term we were given the assignment to recommend how to disburse federal funds to dozens and dozens of non-profits. All of these agencies were seriously underfunded. If we gave Homeless Veteran Shelter A the funding they needed to provide beds and counseling to 25 mentally ill veterans, then Battered Women Shelter B wouldn't be able to replace their leaky roof and would have to turn away desperate women with children. Every decision we made had major effects on our most vulnerable citizens. What entitled me to have god-like powers over the lives of others? Nothing. I hated it!

Politicians make a dozen decisions like that every day before breakfast. They love it. They fight with everything they've got, spending billions of dollars to get that kind of power over others. There's something sick about all of them.

[Milton Kuo]

Re: Trump knows nothing about the KKK

I was never a fan of Trumps business tactic.

But, can't we all agree all the major US Politicians and around the world are ego maniacs. I remember well how many iTulip readers thought Hope and Change of Senator Obama was welcomed.

The job requirement for a National Politician is to be an ego maniac or you won't get elected!

Given the rather, um, shocking title of this thread, I guess I'll do something I'll probably regret and state my opinion, which is likely to be very unpopular.

I find it very interesting how the opinion on Trump here is not just negative but bitterly so. It is my opinion that there is definitely a double standard here.

It is said that Trump has not made clear how he intends to "make America great again", that he lacks foreign policy experience, and that just these shortcomings make him an unacceptable candidate. Didn't this apply to Obama, too? At the very least, Trump has shown he can kind of succeed in the private sector, silver spoon, inherited ladder, and all. He did turn a large, multi-million dollar fortune into a multi-billion dollar fortune despite having a couple of rather expensive divorces so he does have at least some business acumen and executive experience. Not just anybody can turn millions of dollars into billions of dollars.

Secondly, the biggest issue with Trump is the accusation that he is racist. From this colored person's perspective, I'm not convinced he's any more or less racist than the previous white presidents we've had. Trump really cannot help who his supporters are because some of the planks of his platform are just going to attract those kinds of people. I agree with his stance of reforming the problem of rampant illegal immigration in this country. I know, the money chewed up by illegal immigrants is a pittance compared to the money spent on the idiotic wars but the illegal immigrants, in my opinion, have a corrosive, negative effect on American society and culture.

Obama seems to have gotten a pass on some of his supporters which include militant black people. Have we all forgotten Jeremiah Wright? Obama's statement that he never was exposed to some of the very racist things Wright said rings hollow. I do not believe it is possible to know a person that long, be in that person's inner circle, and not know something that the public ultimately found out about easily without resorting dipping into the bag of a political party's dirty tricks.

That said, Sanders looks to be like the candidate I'll most likely vote for in the presidential election assuming Hillary Clinton's cronies don't find a way to steal the Democrat nomination from him. However, if it's Clinton against Trump, I'll vote for Trump in a heartbeat.

Trump and Sanders are the only anti-establishment candidates running. Sure, Trump could be a phony and he really might be the fascist dictator that the corrupted media claims is he. If he is, however, then the so-called liberals can thank that the Second Amendment still exists because it gives us an out if a Trump presidency is as awful as the bullhorn claims he'll be.

It seems to me that the establishment (the super rich and their propaganda channels) are squirming in their seats and are nigh in a panic. Trump absolutely cannot be controlled because he doesn't need their money and the other Republican candidates are such a joke that they don't have much of a chance of fairly winning the Republican nomination. At the moment, it seems to me the establishment is focusing its efforts on making sure Sanders doesn't win the Democrat ticket.

I would love to see a Trump-Sanders presidential election. Both candidate would be running on a platform with a plank of, "Oligarchs, the party is over." (Of course, Trump could be lying.) I think it's about time that the establishment felt a little fear.

[Southernguy]

Re: Trump knows nothing about the KKK

You are fxxxxg right!

I'd label a lot of high-level politicians as psychopaths.

I used to sit on a citizen advisory board for my city. A few years into my term we were given the assignment to recommend how to disburse federal funds to dozens and dozens of non-profits. All of these agencies were seriously underfunded. If we gave Homeless Veteran Shelter A the funding they needed to provide beds and counseling to 25 mentally ill veterans, then Battered Women Shelter B wouldn't be able to replace their leaky roof and would have to turn away desperate women with children. Every decision we made had major effects on our most vulnerable citizens. What entitled me to have god-like powers over the lives of others? Nothing. I hated it!

Politicians make a dozen decisions like that every day before breakfast. They love it. They fight with everything they've got, spending billions of dollars to get that kind of power over others. There's something sick about all of them.

[santafe2]

Re: Trump knows nothing about the KKK

I would love to see a Trump-Sanders presidential election. Both candidate would be running on a platform with a plank of, "Oligarchs, the party is over." (Of course, Trump could be lying.) I think it's about time that the establishment felt a little fear.

[Thailandnotes]

Re: Trump knows nothing about the KKK

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...mepage%2Fstory

[flintlock]

Re: Trump knows nothing about the KKK

I was never a fan of Trumps business tactic.

But, can't we all agree all the major US Politicians and around the world are ego maniacs. I remember well how many iTulip readers thought Hope and Change of Senator Obama was welcomed.

The job requirement for a National Politician is to be an ego maniac or you won't get elected!

Exactly. As if most all politicians don't have huge egos. The difference with Trump is he has no filter. Why, you ask? Because he doesn't have to. He doesn't need to placate big donors. He is sitting on a large fortune. He had success and fame BEFORE this. He doesn't really need the gig. It's just a lark. Most of these other goofs have dedicated their lives to gaining political power. They've dreamed of this since childhood. It's what they live for. Trump doesn't particularly give a fook. What started out as your typical ego boost campaign, meant purely for short term gratification, had probably even surprised The Donald. I'm under no illusions that any of these other guys are any better. The difference is they don't have the luxury of doing much else with their lives that will fulfill their need for adoration and praise. That's what keeps most of them in line. Trump will just go back to running big deals and promoting his "Brand".

[flintlock]

Re: Trump knows nothing about the KKK

That's the thought that came to mind when I was reading the posted material on this thread - how does he (Trump) expect to get elected after alienating immigrants, Mexicans, Muslims, blacks and...

Come on, how many votes from those groups do you think the Republicans were going to get anyway? This is simply my prediction, but Trump will pull surprising numbers from the Democratic blue collar working class. People who have felt marginalized for years and are hit especially hard by illegal immigration, trade deficits, and shrinking manufacturing. Being lifelong Democrats they may not brag about it but when they go into that booth they will pull the Trump ticket. And it will make the difference from 2008 and 2012. The stiffs the Republicans put up in those years couldn't draw anything from the Democrat base.

The Republicans never really had any chance of ever recovering the White House again until the Democrats made the horrible decision to anoint Hillary. Otherwise we'd be looking at a blowout regardless of who the Republicans ran. Think of this election as a minor speed bump on the road to European style Socialism, nothing more.