I mean, how else do you parse SD Senator Rounds’ comment about Trump’s hedge or
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| Why Is This Man Laughing? Rounds Just Emabarrassed His Home State Of SD (photo from argusleader.com) |
misstatement about Ku Klux Klansman David Duke’s recent accolades about Donald Trump?
First off, about a week ago, former KKK grand wizard (“Grand Wizard?” What a bunch of laughable morons.) David Duke told a radio audience that “voting against Trump is treason to your heritage.” Not sure exactly what he means by “heritage,” but given the KKK’s historically racist and nativist sentiment, you have to figure he’s talking to a market that consists of white supremacists. That’s an assumption reinforced by the quick denunciation of the KKK by GOP leaders in the House and Senate a couple of days ago.
As to Trump himself, the favorite to capture the Republican nomination for the presidency doesn’t seem to be so sure. He made an offhand statement about disavowing the implicit endorsement shortly after Duke’s remarks, but when quizzed repeatedly about them on a Sunday talk show last weekend, Trump wasn’t so quick to disavow and denounce. He said he “knows nothing about David Duke” and “white supremacists” and that he needed to do some “research” on the subject.
Personally, I think Trump is full of it, but I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt when he claimed later that he had a “bad earpiece” and didn’t completely understand the questions. It really doesn’t matter that much in the context of what I heard our Senator Mike Rounds say about the subject. The general tenor of Rounds’ remarks, per his office’s explanation, were to note that Trump
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| KKK In Rapid City, SD (1920s) Is Waffling About This OK With Rounds? |
made a “mistake” by not disavowing the KKK, and that Trump’s reaction was “unfortunate.” That part is up for interpretation, but Rounds’ zinger is the part where he says that even if Trump’s waffling was done “intentionally–and I don’t think he did, I think he just made a mistake–they’re still going to do a better job with him there than if you had Hillary or Bernie in his place.”
How are we supposed to take Rounds’ remarks in any way other than in which they were delivered? Senator Rounds thinks that wavering, equivocating, vacillating (or any other way you want to say “waffling”) about people and organizations like David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan, which are built on foundations of racial, ethnic and religious hatred, can still make you a better president than your Democratic counterparts. Rounds has just managed to give “blind partisanship” a name much worse than it already deserves.
*** John Tsitrian *** is a South Dakota businessman and writer
READ MORE commentary from John at the Constant Commoner
