David Duke threatens run against Rep. Scalise

Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke says that he might run against House Majority Whip Steve Scalise and that Scalise is a “sellout.”

{mosads}The Louisiana Republican has been caught up in a controversy over revelations that in 2002 he addressed a white supremacist group founded by Duke. 

“I might just have to run against Steve Scalise,” Duke said Wednesday in an interview with “The Jim Engster Show” first reported by BuzzFeed. “I really might. I’m definitely going to consider it.”

Duke added that Scalise should resign from his leadership position and Congress altogether.

“He should resign because the difference between Steve Scalise and I is that he campaigned on the same issues that I introduced to the Republican Party, but he sold out,” Duke said. 

Duke criticized Scalise for saying that speaking to Duke’s group, the European-American Unity and Rights Organization, was a “mistake I regret,” after the revelation last month. 

“I said nothing different at the conference any different than what I ran for office on,” Duke said. “This wasn’t a Klan meeting. It wasn’t any sort of a radical meeting, it was a meeting that said there’s European-American rights, right?”

Duke ran unsuccessfully for governor and U.S. senator, but he argued that Scalise was condemning those in his district who voted for Duke in those campaigns. 

“What he’s basically saying is 60 percent of his district, the same people, by the way, who voted for him, that they’re just nothing but a bunch of racists,” Duke said. 

The White House and other Democrats have jumped on Scalise’s description of himself in the 1990s comparing himself to Duke.

“He used to say that he was David Duke without the baggage, whatever that means,” Duke said.

“The New York Times admitted that the Republican Party won office and got control of the United States House of Representatives, essentially on my political issues,” he added, “opposed to the massive illegal immigration, on the issues of welfare reform, on so many other issues that I’ve talked about.

“And but the difference is with me and someone like me Steve Scalise, or [Sen.] David Vitter [R-La.], you know, the prostitution king. The difference between myself and those guys is that I didn’t sell out. I’ve never sold out.”