Unit 3 Post

Donald Trump Under Fire for Hesitating to Disavow Support from KKK Members

The current Republican front runner, Donald Trump, has been under fire early this week after an interview with CNN where he refused to disavow the support from former Klan leader David Duke. In an interview with CNN correspondent Jake Trapper, Trump claimed that he had no idea who David Duke was or what white supremacy was about. Trump refused to say that he would not accept the support of white supremacists four times, each time offering the question "what is white supremacy?" In response to Trapper's question about whether Trump would like to publicly disavow Duke's endorsement, Trump replied, "I don't know what group you're talking about. You wouldn't want me to condemn a group that I know nothing about. ... If you would send me a list of the groups, I will do research on them and certainly I would disavow them if I thought there was something wrong."

Later in the week, Trump took to twitter to publicly disavow David Duke's support. At a press conference on the same day Trump was endorsed by ex-candidate Chris Christie, he retweeted a video of him being asked about David Duke and disavowing his support.

While Trump made a huge mistake in refusing to deny the endorsement of David Duke during the interview, this story is a prime example of horse-race journalism. Instead of asking Trump about his plans for policies, the CNN correspondent was more interested in shining a light on what kind of people have been showing support for Trump recently, perhaps in an attempt to make him look bad to the public. This story also reveals the impact of mass media and broadcast media on society. Television acts as a public medium for politics, especially in an election year, and when a candidate leading an election makes a mistake, it can be expected that the mistake will be talked about on all major news networks. Social media also plays a large role in this story because in the past, candidates would have to publicly make a formal statement to disavow support, but now candidates are free to make this announcement through a social media platform such as Twitter. However, Trump's hesitation and act of confusion about white supremacy and David Duke may cause him to lose support in the polls. After Super Tuesday, we shall see if Trump's twitter announcement was enough to appease his supporters.

Source: http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/02/28/468455028/trump-wont-condemn-kkk-says-he-knows-nothing-about-white-supremacists