After Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump refused to distance himself from former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke, MSNBC host Joe Scarborough asked if “this is how the party of Abraham Lincoln dies,” in a column for the Washington Post on Monday.
Scarborough, who has been repeatedly criticized for his apparent on-air coziness with Trump, wanted to know how the billionaire real estate mogul couldn’t know who Duke was.
“The first question is why would Trump pretend to be so ignorant of American history that he refused to pass judgment on the Ku Klux Klan before receiving additional information?” he asked. “What kind of facts could possibly mitigate a century of sins committed by a violent hate group whose racist crimes terrorized Americans and placed a shameful blot on this nation’s history?”
Trump has repeatedly bragged about having the “world’s greatest memory” so it’s hard to believe Trump doesn’t know what the KKK stands for, he wrote.
“The harsher reality is that the next GOP nominee will be a man who refused to condemn the Ku Klux Klan and one of its most infamous Grand Wizards when telling the ugly truth wouldn’t have cost him a single vote,” Scarborough said.
He concluded: “So is this how the party of Abraham Lincoln dies?”
During his Monday morning broadcast, Scarborough said Trump’s supposed lack of knowledge of Duke and the KKK were “disqualifying.”
“It’s breathtaking. That is disqualifying right there. To say you don’t know about the Ku Klux Klan? You don’t know about David Duke?” he said. “I mean is he really so stupid that he thinks Southerners aren’t offended by the Ku Klux Klan and David Duke? Is he really so ignorant of Southern voters that he thinks this is the way to their heart — to go neutral, to play Switzerland when you’re talking about the Klan?”
