Though Republican vice presidential candidate Mike Pence declined Monday to say whether he thinks former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke is a deplorable individual, he stressed the GOP presidential ticket rejects his support.
“I’m not really sure why the media keeps dropping David Duke’s name,” Pence said. “Donald Trump has denounced David Duke repeatedly. We don’t want his support, and we don’t want the support of people who think like him.”
CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked, “You would call [Duke] a ‘deplorable’?”
“No, I’m not in the name-calling business,” the Indiana governor responded.
Pence sat down with Blitzer Monday to discuss a host of 2016 election issues, including when Hillary Clinton claimed last week that “half of Trump supporters [are in] the basket of deplorables.”
These so-called deplorables include persons who are “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic, you name it,” she said last Friday evening at a fundraiser in New York City.
The Democratic nominee amended her claim the next day, and said she didn’t mean to say half of Trump’s supporters are “deplorables.” She did, however, stick to her claim that the Trump campaign has attracted a who’s-who of unsavory bigots, including David Duke.
On Monday, Blitzer pushed Pence on whether the Trump campaign considers people like Duke, who has been a vocal supporter of the GOP nominee, “deplorable.”
“What Hillary Clinton did Friday night was shocking. The millions of people who support Donald Trump are not a basket of anything. They are Americans and they deserve the respect of the Democrat nominee for president of the United States,” Pence said after he stressed the Trump campaign wants nothing to do with Duke.
Blitzer then claimed Clinton had walked back saying half.
“Well, did she walk it back?” Pence asked.
Blitzer responded, “She said she regretted it.”
“She said she regretted saying half. So what was it, 40 percent? She has insulted millions of Americans. And her answer to that is to regret the math that she used,” Pence responded.
“She has not apologized for doing this, she has not retracted this statement, and, frankly, we really question her ability to campaign across this country and reach out to hurting Americans, having expressed this statement and not apologized for it with qualifications,” he said.
