A former senior Trump adviser is under fire for complaining that Republicans have had to disavow one of the nation’s most notorious race-hate leaders.
Kellyanne Conway, 59, who served as senior counselor to President Donald Trump during his first term, spoke with Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Monday night about Graham Platner, a Democratic candidate in Maine’s Senate race.
Platner has faced mounting scrutiny over the past several months after it emerged he has a Nazi tattoo from his time in the military, and that he allegedly sent sexually explicit messages to a woman who is not his wife. Platner has been married to Amy Gertner since 2023 and his wife says the messages were sent in the early days of their marriage.
“They’re not uncomfortable enough,” Conway told Hannity about the attitude toward Platner among Democratic Party ranks.
She then went on to make a bizarre comparison to David Duke, the former grand wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
“Remember, everybody who’s a Republican anywhere had to disclaim David Duke, even if we never met him, had a meal with him, agreed with anything he said,” she added.
Duke is a white supremacist who previously served as both a Republican member of the Louisiana House of Representatives and head of the Ku Klux Klan.
He has historically promoted antisemitic conspiracy theories, denied the Holocaust, pushed racist pseudoscience asserting Black inferiority, and called for racial segregation and an end to non-white immigration. He also endorsed Trump’s first run for the presidency.
Platner has meanwhile disavowed Nazi ideology and said he was ignorant of his tattoo’s meaning when he first got it, though some pundits have contested that claim.
“I want every single Democrat who’s running as a United States Senate candidate this year to step away from this guy, to tell him to get off the ticket,” Conway said Monday.
Critics were quick to slam Conway online over her comments. “Are they mad they had to disown David Duke now?” Adam Kinzinger, a former Republican congressman, posted on X.
“Girl, if they had to MAKE you disclaim David Duke…” journalist Jay Bookman added.
Democratic strategist Leslie Marshall fired back with a list of controversial GOP figures that Republicans might want to consider disowning themselves: “Ken Paxton? Randy Fine? Andy Ogles?”
Paxton, the Texas Attorney General now running for Senate, has faced impeachment proceedings in the past over corruption allegations and is further accused of having an extramarital affair.
Fine, a Florida congressman, is well-known for his vehement Islamophobic rhetoric, including referring to Muslim members of Congress as “terrorists.”
Ogles has a track record of similar anti-Muslim rhetoric, as well as misrepresenting his academic resume and campaign finance scandals.
