>>>First, he had to be pushed really hard to reject the KKK. A decent human would have stood up the minute he heard about it and said "I reject this. I don't want their support. ..." Took him several days.
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>Here's what happened in real life when he did disavow immediately. http://www.weeklystandard.com/trump-disavows-endorsement-of-white-supremacist-david-duke/article/2001301
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>Two days later, a CNN reporter asked again: http://time.com/4240268/donald-trump-kkk-david-duke/ This time, Trump did protest that he knows nothing about Duke or White supremacy so if a CNN reporter wants him to comment, they ought to provide a list of organizations or people so Trump can do his research and give a considered reply. And then in his very next interview, Trump said "David Duke is a bad person, who I disavowed on numerous occasions over the years. I disavowed him. I disavowed the KKK. Do you want me to do it again for the 12th time? I disavowed him in the past, I disavow him now."
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>Sure enough, if you go right back to 2000 when Trump was first interested in standing for office, he ended his involvement saying "The Reform Party now includes a Klansman, Mr. Duke, a neo-Nazi, Mr. Buchanan, and a communist, Ms. Fulani. This is not company I wish to keep.”
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>Yet you say he had to be "pushed really hard" and that a decent person would stand up the minute he heard about it. Are you focusing only on the CNN piece, or what's the basis? Who are you saying pushed him? And bearing in mind what he thinks of CNN: why is it evil for Trump to want to check the facts before reacting?
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>Alternatively: if the MSM strategy was to keep raising the KKK to create a connection to Trump in the minds of voters, it's safe for him to keep reminding them that he has no knowledge of this stuff so if they want comment, they'd better provide their list of interest so he can do research.
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>FWIW, Trump subsequently attributed the furor to bad equipment. "I was sitting in a house in Florida, with a bad earpiece. I could hardly hear what he's saying. I hear various groups. I don't mind disavowing anyone. I disavowed Duke the day before at a major conference."
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>>> the rejection is irrelevant because he brought Steve Bannon, the man who gave legitimacy to the alt-right, in to run his campaign, and now Bannon is on the transition team.
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>Bannon says he simply gave fair access to certain viewpoints that were being stifled by the MSM. You call it "gave legitimacy" ; he might call himself a protector of political expression against MSM corruption and the "ugly unity" identified by the Chinese. As always, the truth probably is somewhere in between.
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>But what I don't get, is your last sentence: " the message is that the alt-right has a home in the Trump administration." Are you saying that if you don't stifle viewpoints, you're connected to those viewpoints and impose them wherever you go? What about the interview with Osama Bin Laden: did that make the reporter and network al-Qaeda legitimizers? Does this all boil back to the "safe space" mentality with people wanting to stifle/exclude/demonize viewpoints apart from their own?

I'm saying that some POVs have no busy in our government. And now with the appointment of Bannon as chief strategist (the role Karl Rove played for GWB), we have a white nationalist as the President-elect's top advisor. That is NOT okay.

Tamar