Yesterday, Republican Party standard bearer and likely nominee Donald Trump refused to denounce David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan. This is the same Trump that retweets white supremacists, calls Mexican immigrants rapists, and excuses the assault of a Black Lives Matter activist (the list goes on). Despite all of this, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy recently said he’ll “work with Donald Trump” and NRCC Chairman Greg Walden embarrassingly compared Trump to Ronald Reagan. Speaker Paul D. Ryan has also pledged to support Trump if he is the nominee.
Unfortunately, Trump and his nativist, xenophobic, and racist campaign are quite familiar to House Republicans. The latest embrace of Trump from House Republicans is not that surprising for a party that proudly defended their Majority Whip despite his association with David Duke and his white supremacist group. What’s more, several House Republicans – including vulnerable incumbents Mike Coffman and Bob Dold – attended the conference of Act! For America, which has been described as the “nation’s leading anti-Muslim hate group.”
“The fact that House Republican leaders have started to embrace Trump after he refused to immediately and unequivocally denounce the Ku Klux Klan is both morally bankrupt and politically damaging,” said Meredith Kelly of the DCCC. “But it’s not at all surprising, given that House Republicans themselves have set the precedent that you can speak to a white supremacist group and keep your job as Majority Whip. Every Republican candidate across the country that has pledged to support Donald Trump should think long and hard about what that means for their own campaign.”
And let’s not forget that Marco Rubio was introduced yesterday by former Senator George Allen. Allen infamously hurled a racial slur at a Democratic staffer during his failed reelection campaign, kept a noose in his office, and was exposed for praising the confederate flag.
All this is to say, the troubling association between racially charged behavior and leading Republicans is not isolated to Donald Trump. So what say Scalise and House Republicans now?