Pence: ‘Trump and I have denounced David Duke repeatedly’

A war of words over Donald Trump’s “deplorables” is intensifying as Republicans and Democrats fight for political points over Hillary Clinton’s claim that numerous NY billionaire’s supporters are racist, sexist and homophobic.

He declined to answer questions on whether Cruz would endorse Trump.

Clinton has been on the defensive over the “basket of deplorables” remark, which the Trump campaign quickly turned into a campaign ad.

Duke has voiced his support for Trump throughout the latter’s campaign.

“For all the world, I have no idea why this man keeps coming up”, he said, calling Duke a “bad man”, and saying that the issue has served as a mere distraction. That’s despite the fact that, by any measure, Trump has offered less detail on far fewer issues over the course of his campaign than Clinton, who has released so many policy proposals, her campaign published a book of them.

“We do not want his support and we do not want the support of the people who think like him”, Pence said, before defending his refusal to call Duke “deplorable”, a term Clinton used to identify half of Trump’s supporters.

Within an hour of Pence’s comments, the Duke Senate campaign renewed its support of Trump’s presidential candidacy.

Pence also batted back increased scrutiny of Trump’s charitable foundation, with reports emerging that Trump is nearly exclusively directing other people’s dollars – not his own – to charity work.

“It’s nearly like a political shortcut”, he said, “a strategy of, ‘Nope you’re guilty too, let’s move to the next question'”.

He added that Clinton “produced so much more” health information than Donald Trump.

Pence, the governor of IN, said on Twitter Monday night that his comments about Duke, IN a pair of interviews on CNN and Fox News, were being taken out of context.

In November, Clinton will need a strong turnout among President Barack Obama’s coalition of minorities, women and millennials.

A day after her campaign announced that she’d be giving a speech linking Trump to the so-called “alt-right movement” – a modern evolution of white supremacy – Trump escalated his attacks, labelling Clinton as “a bigot who sees people of color only as votes, not as human beings worthy of a better future”.

That’s a big contrast to Trump’s visit with the same group of Republicans in July, when the presidential nominee clashed with several GOP senators. I really do not believe it was a comment that Trump wanted to make.

He said that, after listening to Clinton’s attacks, Trump had come to the conclusion that she was guilty of numerous charges she was lobbing. “We don’t want his support, and we don’t want the support of people who think like him”.

“Trump must be Putin-like in the office, because seriously, Mike Pence is at a loss with words?” she asked rhetorically.

But when Pence met with Senate Republicans, at least one lawmaker, Sen. “I’m not so sure even if anyone understands that”, he said.

“Did she walk it back?”