David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan leader and avid Donald Trump supporter, said in an interview with the Daily Beast that he is seriously considering running for Congress. He is weighing a campaign against Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA), the House majority whip, who, ironically, attracted controversy when it was reported in 2014 that he spoke at an event sponsored by Duke’s white nationalist group in 2002.
Duke told the Daily Beast that he was driven to run by last week’s massacre of five white police officers in Dallas, as well as Scalise’s vote for legislation restricting Confederate flags on federal veterans’ cemeteries.
“He crawled on his hands and his knees to the black caucus. This should not stand,” Duke said.
Duke was elected in 1989 to one term in Louisiana’s House of Representative before launching several unsuccessful bids for various state and federal offices, including for the House district that Scalise now represents, in 1999.
Duke told the Daily Beast that he had already set up an exploratory committee and that he would make a final decision “in a few days,” before the July 22 deadline to get on the ballot.
Duke invoked Trump in the interview, claiming credit for the wave Trump was riding “of anti-establishment feeling that I’ve been nurturing for 25 years.”
“There are millions of people across the country who would like to have me in the Congress. I’d be the only person in Congress openly defending the rights and the heritage of European Americans,” Duke said. “We are on the offensive today. There’s no more defenses.”
