Republican front-runner Donald Trump made headlines by refusing to disavow support from the Ku Klux Klan and former Grand Wizard David Duke, now blaming a faulty ear piece for his answers. Trump repeated Duke’s name, claimed he didn’t know who he was, and never condemned the KKK.
As Trump spins his lack of condemnation, one GOP candidate in the past had no problem distancing himself from the KKK.
In 1984, President Ronald Reagan repudiated the endorsement of the KKK.
Reagan sent a letter to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, in which he wrote:
Those of us in public life can only resent the use of our names by those who seek political recognition for the repugnant doctrines of hate they espouse.
The politics of racial hatred and religious bigotry practiced by the Klan and others have no place in this country, and are destructive of the values for which America has always stood.