Retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, a top adviser to Donald Trump, is fed up with people who try to tie the Ku Klux Klan to the Republican Party.
“Don’t try to tie the KKK to the Republican Party or the conservative movement in this country,” the former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency told CNN’s Erin Burnett Thursday evening.
To start the interview, the anchor brought up former KKK wizard David Duke’s praise of Trump’s immigration speech on Wednesday and asked Flynn to comment on “the fact” that the GOP nominee’s message is resonating with white supremacists. Duke, also a former state representative, is currently a candidate for the Republican nomination for a U.S. Senate seat in Louisiana with very little chance of winning.
“Not only does Donald Trump disavow them, but I think most Americans disavow that line of thinking and those kinds of groups,” Flynn assured her. On a personal level, Flynn said “I find them disgusting.”
After Trump’s speech in Phoenix Wednesday, in which he pledged there would be no amnesty and insisted that Mexico would pay for a wall along the southern border, Duke tweeted out that he though Trump’s remarks were “excellent.”
Excellent speech by Donald Trump tonight. Deport criminal aliens, end catch and release, enforce immigration laws & America First.
— David Duke (@DrDavidDuke) September 1, 2016
To this, Flynn said “Donald Trump can’t control what David Duke tweets out. Nobody can.”
He added that from the Trump campaign there is “zero support — zero — and zero avowment of what [Duke] represents.”
