David Duke made headlines earlier this year when he endorsed Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
That triggered a rash of bad headlines for Trump—and even charges of racism that he still must confront from time to time—because Duke, who is a former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, is a white nationalist, anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist and a Holocaust denier. But now he’s got his own plans for the November general election.
“I’ve very seriously set up an exploratory committee to run for the United States Congress against Steve Scalise,” Duke told The Daily Beast on Tuesday afternoon. “I expect to make a decision in a few days.”
The deadline to enter the Republican congressional primary is July 22. Scalise, the No. 3 man in the House Republican Conference, represents Louisiana’s First Congressional District. The irony is that the congressman once referred to himself as “David Duke without the baggage.”
This would not be Duke’s first foray into politics. He served in the Louisiana legislature for one term, and was a Democratic presidential candidate in 1988, then ran for president as a Republican in 1992. He’s also previously run for the U.S. House and Senate, as well as Governor of Louisiana.
As The Daily Beast reports:
Duke said the killing of five white police officers in Dallas by a black militant pushed him to the brink of running.
“I don’t take any satisfaction in the fact that I was right, but I have been right,” he said. “Unless European Americans stand up, they are going to lose everything they care about in this country.”
Duke sees 2016 as his year to win against “sellout Steve Scalise” because of new racial tensions.
“There are millions of people across the country who would like to have me in the Congress. I’d be the only person in Congress openly defending the rights and the heritage of European Americans,” he said. “We are on the offensive today. There’s no more defenses.”
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