Il Don speaks

Donald Trump is still making news with his tweets: Donald Trump Has No Problem Being Associated With Fascist Mussolini 02/28/2016:

Neetzan Zimmerman reports in Trump retweets Mussolini quote The Hill 02/28/2016:

Asked about the tweet on Sunday's "Meet the Press," Trump responded that he knew the quote was by Mussolini when he retweeted it.

"Mussolini was Mussolini," Trump replied. "It’s a very good quote, it’s a very interesting quote. I know who said it, but what difference does it make whether it’s Mussolini or somebody else?"

"You want to be associated with a fascist?" asked host Chuck Todd. "No, I want to be associated with interesting quotes," Trump shot back.

From Wikipedia:

It turns out Il Don fell for a trick from Gawker, How We Fooled Donald Trump Into Retweeting Benito Mussolini by Alex Pareene 02/28/2016:

Last year, we set a trap for Trump. We came up with the idea for that Mussolini bot under the assumption that Trump would retweet just about anything, no matter how dubious or vile the source, as long as it sounded like praise for himself. (It helps that that a number of Mussolini’s quotes sound plausibly like lines from Trump’s myriad books.) The account, @ilduce2016, was created by Gawker senior writer Ashley Feinberg and Gawker Media Editorial Labs director Adam Pash. It has tweeted solely at Donald Trump, multiple times a day, since December 2015.

Our Fascist bot was anything but subtle. It was, after all, directly named after Mussolini. The New York Times today swiftly recognized that it was a parody account. At the time of the account’s creation, Gawker Media Executive Editor John Cook expressed some concern that the joke behind the account was far too obvious, and wouldn’t trick anyone but a complete idiot.

Today, Donald Trump proved him—and all of us—right.

In the Meet the Press interview shown in the video above, Chuck Todd, who in FOXWorld counts as "liberal media," even offered Il Don an alibi in his question, saying he didn't know it was a Mussolini quote when he retweeted it.

But Il Don wasn't having it, he wanted us all to know he dang well does know who said it. Because Il Don's followers say they like him because he speaks his mind and don't worry about none of that thar "political correctness." Awesome.

I guess Il Don is going straight-on White Power, Donald Trump Tells Jake Tapper He Won't Denounce David Duke or The KKK 02/28/2016:

From long, long ago, when Old Man Bush was President and Il Don's supporter David Duke was the Republican candidate for Louisiana Governor. Yes, there was a time when a Republican President, head of the Party that considers itself the party of God and Jesus Christ, would publicly denounce an overt white supremacist, even if it meant making it easier for a Democratic candidate to be elected Governor (Roberto Suro, THE 1991 ELECTION: Louisiana; Bush Denounces Duke As Racist and Charlatan New York Times 11/07/1991):

Speaking at a news conference in Washington, President Bush said: "When someone asserts the Holocaust never took place, then I don't believe that person ever deserves one iota of public trust. When someone has so recently endorsed Nazism, it is inconceivable that someone can reasonably aspire to a leadership role in a free society."

Mr. Duke, who was openly associated with neo-Nazi groups in the 1970's and was a grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan from 1975 to 1980, has proved a major embarrassment to the President and the national leadership of the Republican Party. Mr. Duke got nearly 500,000 votes to finish second in an open primary Oct. 19 and won the right to contest a runoff election Nov. 16. ...

The President and other Republican leaders in Washington have repeatedly disavowed Mr. Duke since the October primary, but none has been as harshly critical or has come as close to endorsing a vote for Mr. Edwards as President Bush did today.

The President said, "I have got to be careful, because I don't want to tell the voters of Louisiana how to cast their ballot."

Yet he said: "When someone has a long record, an ugly record of racism and of bigotry, that record simply cannot be erased by the glib rhetoric of a political campaign. So I believe David Duke is an insincere charlatan. I believe he's attempting to hoodwink the voters of Louisiana, I believe he should be rejected for what he is and what he stands for."

But fast-forward to today, and Il Don may want the guy to be his Vice Presidential candidate.

Cenk Uygur recently interviewed Il Don's supporter David Duke on The Young Turks, Ex-KKK Grand Wizard David Duke Explains How Jews Control Everything (Interview w/ Cenk Uygur) 12/17/2015: