BATON ROUGE, La., Feb. 25 (UPI) — Former Louisiana lawmaker and Klu Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke said Thursday that a vote for Sen. Ted Cruz or Sen. Marco Rubio over Donald Trump “is really treason to your heritage.”
Duke, who has been a vocal supporter of Trump in the past, called on his radio listeners to back Trump’s bid for the White House.
“Voting for these people, voting against Donald Trump at this point is really treason to your heritage,” he said on the David Duke Radio Program Wednesday, referring to Cruz and Rubio. “I’m not saying I endorse everything about Trump, in fact I haven’t formally endorsed him. But I do support his candidacy, and I support voting for him as a strategic action. I hope he does everything we hope he will do.”
Duke called Trump’s campaign an “insurgency that is waking up millions of Americans,” and urged his listeners to volunteer for Trump’s campaign.
“Get off your duff. Get off your rear end that’s getting fatter and fatter for many of you every day on your chairs. When this show’s over, go out, call the Republican Party, but call Donald Trump’s headquarters, volunteer,” he said.
Despite the encouragement, Duke has not endorsed Trump, and the real estate magnate has previously said he doesn’t want Duke’s endorsement. However, Duke is not the only white supremacist who has been rooting for Trump to win the presidency.
As Trump continues to rise in popularity, white supremacist websites have enjoyed a boom in traffic and white supremacist groups have been actively campaigning for Trump.
While Trump has said he repudiates attention from white supremacists like Duke, more than half of Trump’s retweets are from purported white supremacist accounts.
Earlier this week, polling in South Carolina found that 20 percent of those who voted for Trump in that state’s primary opposed freeing the slaves during the Civil War.
