Donald Trump on Sunday declined to condemn David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan leader who this week urged sympathizers to vote for the billionaire in the race for the Republican presidential nomination.
“I don’t know anything about David Duke,” Trump said, in an interview on CNN, adding: “Certainly I would disavow it if I thought there was something wrong.”
Trump subsequently reversed course again – tweeting: “As I stated at the press conference on Friday regarding David Duke – I disavow” – but not before his remarks had stirred up further controversy in an increasingly chaotic Republican primary. He also did not condemn the KKK, as he was asked to during the interview.
The businessman, who on Friday was endorsed by two sitting Republican governors, Chris Christie of New Jersey and Paul LePage of Maine, leads polling in every Super Tuesday state except Texas and by some counts Arkansas.
Twelve states vote on Tuesday, in a set of primaries and caucuses that could give Trump a strong grip on the nomination. Reports on Saturday suggested frantic behind-the-scenes efforts to stop him have failed for months.
Trump has attracted admiring statements from other fringe figures on the right. On Saturday, Jean-Marie Le Pen, the former leader of France’s far-right Front National, tweeted that if he were American he would vote for Trump.
Leaders who oppose Trump’s policies have also increasingly associated Trump with far-right figures. Also on Saturday, two former Mexican presidents compared Trump to Hitler. The businessman’s rise in Republican polls has been fueled by angry rhetoric against undocumented migrants and a promise to build a wall on the southern border.
On Sunday morning, Trump himself retweeted a purported Mussolini quote, from a Twitter account parodying the Italian dictator that was later revealed to have been set up by the website Gawker.
The Anti-Defamation League has asked Trump to condemn Duke. On Friday, Trump told reporters that he disavowed the endorsement. Two days later, however, he was asked on State of the Union whether he does in fact condemn Duke and the KKK.
“I don’t know anything about David Duke. I don’t know anything about what you’re even talking about with white supremacy or white supremacists,” Trump said.
“So I don’t know. I don’t know – did he endorse me, or what’s going on? Because I know nothing about David Duke; I know nothing about white supremacists.”
Trump then repeated that he knew nothing about Duke and did not think he had ever met him.
“I have to look at the group,” he said. “I mean, I don’t know what group you’re talking about.
“You wouldn’t want me to condemn a group that I know nothing about. I’d have to look. If you would send me a list of the groups, I will do research on them and certainly I would disavow if I thought there was something wrong.
“You may have groups in there that are totally fine – it would be very unfair. So give me a list of the groups and I’ll let you know.”
The refusal to pass judgment on the former Klansman directly contradicted what Trump told reporters on Friday.
His claim to know nothing about Duke also contradicted a statement Trump made in 2000, when he called Duke “a Klansman” and said: “This is not company I wish to keep.”
The businessman’s opponents quickly seized on his refusal to denounce the KKK. “We cannot be a party that nominates someone who refuses to condemn white supremacists and the KKK,” Marco Rubio told a crowd in Virginia, followed in short order by Ted Cruz, who said Trump should be “better than this”.
The “KKK is abhorrent”, the senator tweeted. In Massachusetts, John Kasich said the interview was “horrific”, and added: “we don’t have any place for white supremacists in the United States of America.”
The Democratic candidates for president were eve more scathing. In Nashville, Tennessee, Hillary Clinton called the interview “pathetic”, and from the trail in Minnesota, Bernie Sanders tweeted: “America’s first black president cannot and will not be succeeded by a hatemonger who refuses to condemn the KKK.”
Clinton retweeted the message.