David Duke: Former KKK leader criticises Donald Trump’s Charlottesville response and defends killer

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Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke isn’t exactly happy with the way Donald Trump reacted to the recent tragedy in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Just minutes after the President condemned the deadly weekend protest, and spoke ill of extremist groups by name including neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan, Mr Duke reacted with a series of tweets.

“It’s amazing to see how the media is able to bully the President of the United States into going along with their FAKE NEWS narrative,” Mr Duke wrote.

Mr Duke later stuck up for the man suspected of having driven through a crowd in Charlottesville, killing one woman and injuring 19 others. The former KKK leader said that James Alex Fields had simply reacted consistent with the violence and chaos that had erupted in the Virginia city.

“When you’re under attack… you panic, and you do things that are stupid and you do things that are wrong,” Mr Duke said in Periscope video.

Mr Duke has been a controversial supporter of Mr Trump, and the President appeared hesitant to condemn or disavow the white supremacist’s endorsement during the 2016 presidential campaign. While Mr Duke was critical of the President’s Charlottesville statement — which many said should have been made earlier — he has frequently supported Mr Trump’s positions.

“We are determined to take our country back,” Mr Duke told white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and far-right protesters at the start of the rally in Charlottesville. “We are going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump.”

The rally in Charlottesville quickly devolved into violence, and forced police there to try and disperse the crowds soon after the official start time. But, police proved relatively ineffective in the environment, since many white supremacists there came armed with semiautomatic weapons — as were some counter protesters.

The white supremacists had planned their rally to protest the removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E Lee. The city had planned on removing the statue after it was determined that Lee did not have a tangible connection to the city’s history, and was therefore a symbol of the hatred and racism that sparked the Civil War. Many southerners view Confederate symbols and statues as a representation of their heritage, in spite of the racist motives that led the South to secede from the United States.