Time and again, Donald Trump has had a chance to appear truly presidential. And time and again, he has blown it eight ways to Sunday. He did it again this weekend, when he waffled on whether he would do whatever it took to keep racist knuckledragger David Duke out of the Senate–even if it meant backing a Democrat.
Trump sat down with Chuck Todd of NBC’s “Meet The Press” for his first major-network interview since being formally crowned as the Republican nominee for president. Late in the interview, the discussion turned to Duke’s announcement on Friday that he was running for David Vitter’s seat in the Senate from Louisiana. In his formal campaign announcement, Duke said that he was “overjoyed” at Trump’s candidacy, and claimed that Trump’s platform was very similar to the one on which he’d run for years.
Trump has disavowed Duke in the past–though not without some prodding. He repeated his disavowal on Sunday. Watch here. The discussion about Duke starts roughly 15 minutes into the interview.
When Todd told Duke that Newt Gingrich had let it be known that no true Republican would support Duke, a visibly irritated Trump replied, “I did. And I do.” Todd then asked Trump whether he would support a Democrat running against Duke “if that’s what was necessary to defeat him?”
Trump’s response?
“I guess, depending on who the Democrat, but the answer would be yes.”
Um, Donald? How would that even be a debate for you? If there was ever a time where party labels should be put aside, it would be if Duke made it out of Louisiana’s unusual jungle primary, in which all candidates appear on the ballot regardless of party affiliation. If no one gets a majority, a runoff election would take place between the top two candidates, regardless of party.
Trump’s response stands in marked contrast to that of President George H. W. Bush when Duke finished second in the 1991 gubernatorial jungle primary. Bush declared that he could not, and would not, support a Holocaust denier and Nazi sympathizer like Duke. He went further and denounced Duke as “an insincere charlatan” who should be “rejected for who he is and what he stands for.”
To be fair, Duke has been rejected in the strongest possible terms by both the state and national Republican establishment. But it’s very telling when the Republican presidential nominee is unwilling to make an equally strong statement that Duke has no business being in the Senate. This was Trump’s first real test of leadership since becoming the de facto leader of the Republican Party–and he failed it miserably.
