Let’s start with Scalise’s “association” with Duke. Here’s the tangible connection: Duke campaign manager Kenneth Knight lived in Scalise’s neighborhood, and they were on friendly terms. That’s it. No record of Scalise and Duke meeting, sharing a stage, or being in the same organization. No record of Scalise praising Duke. When asked, Scalise condemned Duke’s bigotry.
By that standard of guilt, I may have more personal association with Duke than Scalise. At least one close friend and one distant family member held posts in Duke’s campaigns, and I once rode in a car with just Duke and his driver. (I had ambushed Duke in a parking lot to make sure he didn’t dodge a scheduled Q&A with USA Today, and he offered me a ride back to my car.) Those indirect ties didn’t stop me from infuriating Duke’s inner circle, though. Struggling to capture the fascist overtones of Duke’s campaign launch, with the full-throated chant of “Duke, Duke, Duke” coming from a massive arena crowd, I fixed on the music playing when the candidate emerged on stage — pointing out that the composer, Richard Strauss, held a position under the Third Reich. It was, perhaps, an unfair dig: Americans know the tune as the 2001: A Space Odyssey theme.
What about Scalise’s alleged “appearance” at a racist conference organized by Knight, Duke’s campaign manager? The same guy treated as credible when describing their friendship suddenly becomes untrustworthy when denying this allegation. Knight, corroborated by his ex-girlfriend, says Scalise appeared at an unconnected neighborhood-association meeting earlier in the day.
Who’s considered more believable than the conference organizer on this question? An author for the Klan-affiliated Stormfront, writing under a pseudonym, whose piece called Scalise’s presentation part of the conference. Not even this disreputable character, though, managed to dredge much racialist content from the legislator’s policy talk.
Making the accusations “mostly true” gets weirdly convoluted:
“Scalise accepted a shady acquaintance’s invitation to speak briefly about domestic policy before a civic association in a hotel that he should have known would host a white-supremacist conference later that day.”
https://missouriindependent.com/2023/10/11/saddling-steve-scalise-with-david-dukes-baggage/#:~:text=I%20worked%20in%20the%20Louisiana,protesting%20in%20a%20Nazi%20uniform.
