Art imitates life with a KKK endorsement subplot in the new season of House of Cards

The fourth season of Netflix's House of Cards dropped after the Republican debate last night, and viewers were quick to notice a subplot with striking relevance to recent events.

In the third episode of the new run, President Frank Underwood is embarrassed by a defaced billboard on primary day in his home state of South Carolina. The sign is a giant photo of Underwood's father posing with a man in a white Ku Klux Klan hood. As is his wont, Underwood spins a tale to kill the story, claiming his father was forced to pose for the picture against his will.

The episode is reminiscent of Donald Trump's recent entanglement with the Klan. Trump failed to promptly condemn the organization and its former grand wizard, David Duke, who said that voting against Trump would be "treason to [whites'] heritage." Even more similarly, in 1927, Trump's father was arrested following a KKK riot "on a charge of refusing to disperse from a parade when ordered to do so."

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.