Republican vice presidential nominee Mike Pence refused to call former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke “deplorable” Monday, potentially undercutting his campaign’s efforts to turn Democrat Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” gaffe against her.
In a CNN interview Monday, Pence said he and his running mate, Donald Trump, “don’t want [Duke’s] support and we don’t want the support of people who think like him, but declined to characterize him as “deplorable.”
“I’m not in the name-calling business, Wolf. You know me better than that,” Pence told CNN host Wolf Blitzer.
[READ: Republican Officials Say No Support for David Duke]
Over the weekend, the Trump campaign pounced on comments Clinton made at the LGBT for Hillary Gala in New York City Friday night, in which she said “you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the ‘basket of deplorables’ — right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it.”
Clinton has said she regrets using the word “half,” but her campaign has otherwise stuck with the assertion that Trump’s campaign has allowed the mainstreaming of the so-called alt-right, including white nationalists and anti-Semitics who support his presidential bid.
Duke, who is running a long-shot campaign for the open Senate seat in Louisiana and a vocal Trump supporter, praised Pence after the interview Monday.
“It’s good to see an individual like Pence and others start to reject this absolute controlled media,” Duke told BuzzFeed. “The truth is the Republican Party is big tent. … It’s ridiculous that they attack me because of my involvement in that nonviolent Klan four decades ago.”
Even as Trump has cut an ad featuring Clinton’s remarks, slamming Clinton as insulting “hard-working Americans like you,” the Clinton camp thinks they can flip the narrative.
“If he’d like to argue against Hillary’s claim that people who are racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic or Islamophobic are deplorable, we are happy to have that debate,” said spokeswoman Christina Reynolds in a statement released before Pence’s interview. “Trump has spent the entire campaign offering divisive views that have given rise to far too much hatred and bigotry — Hillary Clinton and [vice presidential nominee] Tim Kaine will continue to call that out.”
Pence’s interview and Dukes’s response gave the Clinton campaign the opening they were looking for.
“If you won’t say the KKK is deplorable, you have no business running the country,” her campaign account tweeted, sharing a link to video of Pence on CNN.
If you won’t say the KKK is deplorable, you have no business running the country. https://t.co/mFut8Qrz9A
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) September 12, 2016
Her campaign also countered Trump’s ad with their own one-minute spot of their own Tuesday, accusing Trump of hypocrisy when he said Clinton’s “deplorables” comment was disqualifying because “you can’t lead this nation if you have such a low opinion of its citizens.”
The ad then pulls together a supercut of Trump insulting Iowa voters, a Mexican-American federal judge, a disabled reporter, a Muslim Gold Star family, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and others.
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Mike Pence Refuses to Call KKK Leader David Duke ?Deplorable? originally appeared on usnews.com
