David Duke, the former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, endorsed Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, who is Jewish, on his radio show Tuesday.
Duke, long one of the country’s highest-profile white supremacists and antisemites, has repeatedly sought political office while spreading conspiracy theories about Jews. In his endorsement of Stein, he said that she was the candidate with the strongest stance against “Jewish power” because she opposed Israel’s military campaign.
“Although Dr. Stein and I obviously have our differences on important issues, she’s the only candidate who speaks clearly against the war in the Middle East and Ukraine,” Duke said on his radio show. “By opposing Jewish supremacy in Israel and Jewish mass murder in Israel, and the policies of the American government in these insane wars and the Ukrainian war there, she’s actually doing something which is harming this Jewish power.”
Duke is an unlikely supporter of Stein, who in addition to being Jewish is a far-left candidate. Duke, a fixture of the far right, previously endorsed Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020.
On his show, Duke claimed that Trump had since lost his support due to a “full-throated subservience to Israel and to the Jewish lobby in the United States” and “on a global level.”
But in endorsing Stein, Duke is still backing a candidate who could help return Trump to the White House. Stein’s bid for president is widely viewed as having a potential spoiler effect on the Harris-Walz campaign, taking enough votes away from the Democratic ticket in crucial swing states to throw them to the Republican nominee. At a recent rally, a Stein surrogate said the ticket couldn’t win, but could “deny Kamala Harris the state of Michigan.”
Stein’s campaign immediately disavowed the endorsement, which it painted as insincere.
“A racist troll has ‘endorsed’ our campaign to draw attention to himself, and certain smear merchants are happy to platform this troll to attack us,” Stein said in a statement. “Of course, I reject any ‘endorsement’ from a white supremacist like David Duke, unlike Kamala Harris who can’t stop bragging about her endorsement from white supremacist mass murderer Dick Cheney.”
(Cheney, Republican George W. Bush’s vice president, announced last month that he would vote for Harris because he believed Trump “can never be trusted with power again.” Stein contends that the Bush administration’s war in Iraq amounted to mass murder.)
Duke has made repeated political forays of his own over the decades, at certain points drawing national attention. He is a former member of the Louisiana House of Representatives, campaigned for U.S. president as a Democrat in 1988, and advanced to the runoff in the 1991 election for governor of Louisiana, which he lost by a wide margin. He has since mounted other unsuccessful runs for office.
And this is not the first time Duke has endorsed or praised a Democrat while citing their antipathy toward Jews or Israel. In 2019, he praised Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar amid controversy over tweets she wrote that drew accusations of antisemitism and for which she apologized. Weeks earlier, he endorsed then-Democratic presidential candidate Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, saying she would “actually put America First rather than Israel First!” (“America First” was the name of an antisemitic World War II-era movement. In 2016, Trump adopted the phrase, and it has become a common campaign slogan that Jewish supporters have also used. Gabbard is no longer a Democrat and endorsed Trump this year.)
Whether or not Duke actually has enough of a following to sway any voters to Stein, supporters of Harris are using the endorsement to attack the Green Party candidate.
“Just because you disavow KKK grand wizard David Duke’s endorsement doesn’t mean it’s not concerning and you didn’t earn it,” tweeted Keith Edwards, a Democratic campaign strategist.
