June 9, 2016

Donald Trump Finally Found Someone to Defend Him Over Attacks on Judge

Too bad it’s David Duke.

Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke speaks to supporters in 2004.Burt Steel/AP

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Donald Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, has received little support from his fellow Republicans over a series of racial remarks about the judge presiding over one of the Trump University lawsuits. Over the past week, Trump has repeatedly suggested that Judge Gonzalo Curiel’s “Mexican heritage” is a conflict of interest because of Trump’s desire to build a wall at the US-Mexican border. Curiel was born in Indiana to Mexican immigrants. Trump later added that a Muslim judge might be biased against him because of his proposed ban on allowing Muslims to enter the country.

Many Republicans have reacted in horror to Trump’s comments. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) called the comments “absolutely unacceptable.” Her colleague Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said Trump’s comments are “the most un-American thing from a politician since Joe McCarthy,” and that if anyone is looking for an “off ramp, this is probably it.” House Speaker Paul Ryan called Trump’s remarks “the textbook definition of a racist comment.” Only Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) mustered a pretty lame defense of Trump.

But now Trump has a vocal, wholehearted defender of his attacks on Curiel: David Duke. The former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan and a former Republican state representative in Louisiana launched into a defense of Trump on Tuesday in a tirade against the Jewish-run media, which he posited were manufacturing outrage over Trump’s comments because he is a threat to the Jewish agenda. He singled out Fox News’ Chris Wallace and CNN’s Jake Tapper, Wolf Blitzer, and Jeff Zucker, the president of CNN Worldwide. “More recently, Fox News, the Shabbat goy shiksa Megyn Kelly, ’cause they love to have some gentiles doing it, they don’t want Jews always out front,” Duke said on his radio show. “And she said he’s not partisan, she said that he, you know, how can you attack someone just for their ancestry. The fact is Donald Trump’s made out, you know, purely and talked about this in the beginning, that this judge in the case, Judge Gonzalo Curiel, has had absolutely partisan activities. He has been an activist in La Raza Lawyers Association.”

Duke has previously urged fellow white supremacists to support Trump’s candidacy. Earlier this year, Trump landed in hot water when he initially refused to disavow Duke and the KKK.

You can listen to Duke’s whole show here and a clip of the segment here.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate