A top foreign policy adviser to Donald Trump on Thursday denounced white supremacists who praised the Republican nominee’s immigration speech in Phoenix, calling them “disgusting.”
“Not only does Donald Trump disavow them, but I think most Americans disavow that line of thinking and those kinds of groups,” retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn told CNN’s Erin Burnett on “OutFront,” adding that he personally finds white supremacists and their views “disgusting.”
Flynn, the former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said Trump’s message on immigration is directed at all Americans and it would be a “big, big mistake” to try to connect racism to the Trump campaign, or to link the Ku Klux Klan to the Republican Party or conservative movement.
Speaking directly to former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke’s praise of the speech, Flynn said Trump can’t control what Duke says, but stressed there is “zero support — zero — and zero avowment of what he represents.”
Trump said last week he does not want the support of white supremacists.
In his speech Wednesday night, Trump insisted there would be “no amnesty” for undocumented immigrants living in the United States and repeated his promise to build a wall between the United States and Mexico, with the southern US neighbor paying for it.
Flynn called it “an excellent speech, very comprehensive and I thought there was a lot of meat to it.”