Donald Trump's father was reportedly arrested in 1927 during a KKK brawl

Donald Trump declines to disavow David Duke and the KKK

(Image credit: CNN/YouTube)

last updated 29 February 2016

The Ku Klux Klan was in the news an improbable amount in the past week. On Saturday, days after former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke encouraged supporters to vote for Donald Trump, a vicious brawl erupted at a Klan anti-immigration rally in Anaheim, California. On Sunday, Trump declined on CNN to repudiate the support of Duke and the Klan, saying, "I know nothing about David Duke. I know nothing about white supremacists." (He had disavowed Duke on Friday, and in 2000.) The Duke/KKK part of Trump's interview with Jake Tapper starts at the six-minute mark:

By the time Trump clarified his anti–David Duke stance on Twitter later Sunday, almost all of his presidential rivals — from both parties — had criticized his refusal to disavow the KKK. Trump's CNN interview also revived interest in a 1927 report in The New York Times unearthed by Boing Boing in September, when most people still expected Trump's poll numbers to crash. The newspaper story was about a KKK rally in Queens to support "native-born Protestant Americans" being "assaulted by Roman Catholic police of New York City," and one of the seven people arrested in the "near-riot" that ensued was Fred C. Trump, Donald Trump's father.

When The New York Times asked Trump about the 1927 article in September, and if he'd ever heard about his father's arrest, "Trump's barrage of answers — his sudden denial of a fact he had moments before confirmed; his repeatedly noting that no charges were filed against his father in connection with the incident he had just repeatedly denied; and his denigration of the news organization that brought the incident to light as a 'little website' — shows his pasta-against-the-wall approach to beating down inconvenient story lines," said Jason Horowitz. You can read Horowitz's interview with Trump at The New York Times.

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.