Racial Controversies of Donald Trump Put GOP in Difficult Situation

It was only a couple of days ago that Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump was pressed to respond to support from David Duke the former leader of the KKK. Trump answered that he did not know Duke had endorsed him and said he disavowed it.

However, on Sunday Trump was again asked about support from the overt racists and the GOP candidate’s response this time made the waters a bit murky.

During a Sunday morning interview, the front runner of the GOP would not condemn the support of the former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard, for his campaign.

He told his interviewer that he did not have any knowledge of the leader of the white supremacist group.

Asked about a willingness for him to condemn the white supremacists, Trump answered he had to look at the group. He added that he did not know the group his interviewer was talking about and he would not want to condemn any group he did not know anything about.

He added that he had to look into it and if someone sent him, a list of the different groups he would research them and would disavow them if he thought there had been something wrong about them.

However, he added you may have some groups mixed in there that are completely fine and that would be unfair so send a list to him and he would review them.

Not at all surprisingly, that exchange prompted another round of questions about whether it would sink his campaign. It was not long until his rivals were criticizing him publicly for what appeared to be a reluctance to denounce his allies who were white supremacists.

The Republican Party sits in a very awkward position with all this.

At an event in Virginia on Sunday, Marco Rubio eagerly denounced Trump’s racially charged controversy. However, Rubio was introducing former senator and governor of Virginia, George Allen who has his political career cut short following a racially charged controversy of his own.

In addition, while Trump doe not evidently known what he should say regarding Duke, it cannot be forgotten that Steve Scalise from Louisiana spoke at a white supremacist even a number of years ago calling himself David Duke without baggage.

Nevertheless, Republicans in the House made Scalise the Majority Whip, which is the No. 3 position of GOP leadership in the entire House.