David Duke backs Republican frontrunner's remarks despite attending notorious 2006 conference in Iran that questioned the Holocaust
A former imperial wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, who once attended a Holocaust denial conference organised by Iran's former hardline president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, came to Donald Trump's defence on Tuesday, saying the Republican frontrunner was under fire because his words threatened a "pro-Israel" US foreign policy
“The Jewish knives are coming out on Donald Trump,” said Mr Duke, who has previously stood as a presidential candidate for both the Democratic and Republican parties and has a track record of voicing anti-Semitic views: “How come it’s against American values to want to preserve the heritage of the country? We’re overwhelmingly a Christian country and overwhelmingly a European country.”
Such support is potentially embarrassing for Mr Trump in the run-up to a planned visit to Israel, where he expects to meet Benjamin Netanyahu, the country's prime minister, according to remarks the candidate made to a gathering of Jewish Republicans in Washington last week.
Mr Duke's expression of solidarity with Mr Trump's anti-Muslim rhetoric also jarred with his attendance in 2006 at a "scientific conference" in Tehran effectively denying the Holocaust organised by Mr Ahmadinejad, Iran's then president and a hardline Islamist who declared the murder of six million Jews by the Nazis in the Second World War "a myth".
Mr Duke accepted an invitation to attend the conference after Mr Ahmadinejad had earned international infamy over a string of hostile remarks about Israel, which he said should "vanish from the pages of time". The same comment was also translated as meaning Israel should be "wiped off the map".
At the conference, Mr Duke praised Iran for allowing "free speech" on the Holocaust, telling reporters: ""It's a shame that Iran, a country we often call oppressive, has to give this opportunity for free speech. I think Israel is a terrorist state. It is the number one terrorist state in the world."
