Eric Trump, son of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, said Thursday that former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke deserves “a bullet.”
“The guy does deserve a bullet,” he told Denver radio host Ross Kaminsky, agreeing with Kaminsky’s suggestion that Duke, an unabashed racist and long-shot Senate candidate, should be shot in the head.
Trump seemed to know he was about to cross a line before he spoke, prefacing his remark by saying, “If I said exactly what you said, I’d get killed for it. But I think I’ll say it anyway.”
“I mean, these aren’t good people, these are horrible people,” he said of white supremacists like Duke, many of whom have publicly embraced his father’s candidacy.
“That’s a good one,” Duke told CNN when he heard about the younger Trump’s remarks. “I have think about it.” The Trump interview was first flagged by CNN’s K-File reporters.
Duke has been a thorn in Donald Trump’s side since February, when the GOP nominee stumbled over a question about whether he would denounce Duke’s support. Trump went on to disavow Duke repeatedly, but the damage was already done.
Since then, Duke has actively tried to hitch his campaign to Trump’s and to build off the success of Trump’s xenophobic message.
Meanwhile, Trump has made a series of speeches about why he deserves African-American votes ― but the effort may have been counterproductive, since those speeches have been criticized for falsely portraying all black people as unemployed, undereducated and living in ghettos.
Eric Trump defended the Trump campaign’s controversial minority outreach effort on Thursday, saying, “My father’s the first Republican who’s gone out and said, ‘Listen, what’s happened to the African-American community is horrible and I’m going to take care of it.’”
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