Black GOP senator condemns Trump for failing to denounce KKK

Tim Scott, the only black Republican in the Senate, waded into the controversy over Donald Trump, David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan on Sunday.

{mosads}In a statement released by Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign, the South Carolina senator said: “Any candidate who cannot immediately condemn a hate group like the KKK does not represent the Republican Party, and will not unite it.”

That echoed statements from Rubio on the trail and in a tweet Sunday afternoon — part of a flood his campaign released attacking Trump for his failure to immediately dismiss an endorsement from Duke, a white nationalist. 

We cannot be a party that nominates someone who refuses to condemn white supremacists and the Ku Klux Klan.

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) February 28, 2016

Trump disavowed Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard, in a tweet Sunday — but not before stumbling over the issue on CNN’s “State of the Union” earlier in the day. On CNN, Trump said he didn’t know anything about Duke or his connections.

“I have to look at the group. I don’t know what group you’re talking about,” he said. “You wouldn’t want me to condemn a group that I know nothing about.”

Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), in another statement released from the Rubio campaign, said: “The Republican Party is the party of Lincoln, the party that ended slavery. Donald Trump’s embrace of the KKK is the clearest demonstration yet that he is not fit to be President.” 

Former Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.), released a strongly worded statement through Rubio’s campaign, which said in part: “As someone of the Jewish faith, which has been a target of KKK hate and violence, I am sickened by Donald Trump’s failure to condemn the KKK and disavow their support of his campaign.

“I recognize that many Republicans stood with Trump even after he insulted a war hero, mocked the disabled, degraded women and defamed a former Republican President. But Trump’s failure to separate himself from David Duke and the KKK crosses the line of any standard of decency.”

On the Democratic side, front-runner Hillary Clinton showed a rare moment of unity with rival Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), as the two landed on the same side of this issue, with Clinton retweeting a message from Sanders’s account.

America’s first black president cannot and will not be succeeded by a hatemonger who refuses to condemn the KKK.

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) February 28, 2016