Former top Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke praised President Donald Trump on Tuesday for his latest remarks regarding the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia over the weekend, which was organized ostensibly as a protest of the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.
Thank you President Trump for your honesty & courage to tell the truth about #Charlottesville & condemn the leftist terrorists in BLM/Antifa https://t.co/tTESdV4LP0
— David Duke (@DrDavidDuke) August 15, 2017
Duke, in his praise of Trump, re-posted a video of the President wondering aloud if the removal of monuments to Confederate figures would end up with the removal of monuments dedicated to early American slaveholders, including Presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.
The video also included Trump saying not everyone at the rally on the side of white supremacists was a neo-Nazi or a white nationalist.
President Trump: "George Washington was a slave owner… Are we gonna take down statues to George Washington? How about Thomas Jefferson?" pic.twitter.com/bUJnbaniwL
— NBC News (@NBCNews) August 15, 2017
“You had people — and I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned, totally — but you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists, okay?” Trump said in the video re-posted by Duke. “And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly.”
“Now, in the other group also, you had some fine people, but you also had trouble-makers, and you see them come with the black outfits, and with the helmets, and with the baseball bats,” Trump added. “You had a lot of bad people in the other group, too.”
