To pick somebody to run against coolidge and they at least felt like they had a couple of good candidates to choose between. This is a time when they choose their nominees at the big meeting of the national par ty. When the democrats converged in the summer of 1924 they knew they had two front runnerrunner a democrat named al smith. Governor of new york at the time. And William Gibbs mcdue. He was originally from tennessee, ultimately became a senator from california in the Woodrow Wilson administration. He was secretary of the treasury and he pulled sauf toff the maj of marrying president wilsons daughter while wilson was president and mcdue was serving as the secretary of treasury. They held the wedding at the white house. It was a big deal. Mack ka due is the soninlaw of the former president , a former treasury secretary, a senator, very rich with tie to the west and the south, vase chairman of the Democratic Party. Very very very well connected. And in fact the last time democrats needed to pick a president ial can date four years early in 1920, they very nearly picked domest picked mcdue. They might have done better with him in 1920 than the guy they ultimately picked and lost. Al smith had a good shot of getting the nomination but william mack ka due was in good stead to. He had one ace in the hole. A secret weapon. Which is that he also had the klan. This was 1924, ku klux klan was absolutely asen decend ent in t 1920s. The film came out and swept the nation, helping to revilify the klan in the old days. The klan got more wind in their sails when they became one of major powers pushing for prohibition. Looking back on prohibition, it seems like u one of the more unlikely things in American History we ever would have decided, to ban alcohol as a country, really, we decided that . But an unsung but important part of why that happened was the klan supporting prohibition. And by the time the Democratic Party was making this hard choice of who to pick to be their nominee for president in 1924, the klan thought it should have a say. The klan was big enough, confident enough, wide spread enough in terms of their reach that they thought they should get to make the call for the democratic president ial nominee. And the two front runners were that guy William Gibbs mcdue and al smith. And for the klan that was an easy pick was al smith was a catholic. And the klan was as anticatholic as they were aant met tick and antiblack. The klan went all in for Williams Gibbs mcdue. And the klan was central to the fight for the president ial nomination that year. An antimcdue delegate from alabama of all places put forward a plank for the Party Platform that year that would have condemned the klan. The fight to approve the antiklan plank for the Party Platform absolutely convulsed the convention that summer. They were literally fight in the aisles. They at one point called in a thousand policemen to break up the brawling on the floor of the convention. Ultimately the antiklan plank and the Party Platform, it was voted down. It was voted down by one vote. Politico. Com did a retro report on this a little more than a year ago and resurfaced this headline, antiklan plank loses by 541 and 3 20ths of a vote to 542 3 20ths of a vote. Riotous scenes mark the roll call. Bedlam over the klan. Second poll is required to settle the question on the klan question. And in the chart there in the third column, its the list of all of the people at the convention and who voted how on the klan plank. It was that big of a deal. Failed by one vote. And when the antiklan so the proklan side won, right . When the antiklan plank lost by that one vote, 20,000 masked hooded clansmen rallied across the hudson river in new jersey to mark the moment. They didnt think they would be able to rally in new york, not with their robes and mask. They crossed over to new jersey and showed force, 20,000 of them. They had an ef gi of new york governor al smith and they beat it up and tore it apart. But then the convention had to move on to picking its nominee, right . You got to pick the klan candidate, the candidate that was clearly favored by the klan and wouldnt denounce them or say a word against them at a convention that couldnt approve an antiklan plank or are you going to pick the catholic guy, al submit. If thats the split in your party, how do you bridge that kind of split . For the Democratic Party that year in 1924 they couldnt bridge it. They started balloting, they started taking votes on who the delegates wanted to be their nominee and honestly they couldnt get there and they couldnt get there and they couldnt get there. That convention dragged on and on and on in the july heat in Madison Square garden. That thing went on for 16 days with thousands of people in there and no air conditioning and the fights and the cops and they kept going ballot after ballot after ballot. Famously that one ultimately went to 103 ballots. A record. And in the end they couldnt decide. The democrats finally in the end, exhausted, they picked neither of their two candidates. They did not pick william mcdue nor did they pick al smith. They ended up throwing in the towel, picking some other guy named john davis who nobody knew and basically had no con sfich wh constituency. They were spent with their fight over the klan and with the klan that summer in new york. They ran that guy josh davis, he got trounsed. Coolidge won the election, sworn in in march of 1925 and the klan, having flexed its muscles that way in National Politics in the lead up to the election, coolidge wasnt their guy. They wanted a democrat in there. But they decided that once coolidge was in there, it was time for them to make another show of political power. And this time they didnt want to make it within one Political Party, particularly a Political Party out of power. This time they wanted to flex their muscles on the national stage. This picture is from ag 1925, during the first year of Calvin Coolidges presidency after the election of 1924. Michael beshlash tweeted this out today. Those are klan robes, the ku klux klan march in full whithoo and robes marching in pennsylvania in 1925. Then a year later they decided to come back and do it again, this time, even big ir. In the fall of 1926, september of 1926 the ku klux klan held their National Conclave in washington, d. C. , second time they rallied thousands strong in d. C. In two straight years. When they turned up in 1926 they turned out 50,000 masked robed klansmen who marched in formation in washington, d. C. No matter how many times ive seen these pictures, no matter how many time ive gone through the pictures, i have a hard time believing that that show of klan force in washington, d. C. , i still have a hard time believing its real. But that was real. 1926. 50,000 klansmen march in washington, d. C. The following year in 1927 there was a klan rally and march in new york city. It started off with a group of fascists, black shirts who clashed with new York City Police and then that melee was joined by about, according to News Coverage, by about a thousand klansmen who turned out in new york, in queens, to march against the police. The the New York Times published at the time some of the texts of the handbills that the flyers that the klan was distributing at the time explaining why they were marching, why they were rallying. The headline on the flyer said americans assaulted by Roman Catholic police of new york city. That was the explanation for why they had to march against the police. So in may of 1927 a thois klansmen and some assorted fascists marched in queens in new york city and ultimately rioted and fought with police. Nobody was killed. There was a lot of News Coverage of it at the time, which survives both from the the New York Times, from the brooklyn daily eagle, a few other papers. The Police Commissioner at the time made a point of telling the public that this was kind of a landmark moment for the klan in new york city. Its not that he didnt know that the klan was active in new york city, its just that new york city had never before seen a thousand klansmen turn out in the streets in robes and masks like they did in may 1927. According to news reports at the time, there were seven men arrested at that klan march in new york, one of them was fred trump, the father of donald trump. Donald trump has previously responded to reporting about this incident by saying it never happened, never happened. Never happened. The whole thing is made up. But there is contemporaneous News Coverage that both describes and shows pictures of that mass klan march, including klansmen marching in new york city in hoods and robes and his fathers name does show up as one of the arrestees from that march. And the sins of the father are not the sins of the son. For anybody. But that is not a reason to ignore history and pretend that everything thats happening in our lifetimes is happening for the first time. I mean we think of the klan now in terms of its role as a terrorist organization during reconstruction, during jim crowe, during the civil rights eras in the south. We think of the klan and their attendant modern white supremacist groups as a magnet for toothless losers and con artists and smalltime violent thugs and some people who are legitimate freaking nuts. But its not ancient history to recognize that the White Supremacist Movement in the United States that persists decade after decade their their goal is not to rest on the edge. Their goals and their expectations have always been that they should exert real mainstream political power. That they should get to pick the president. At least they should get to pick who runs. I mean what is unpredictable now is that we dont know what to expect from those groups Going Forward now that its a modern president who appears to be picking them. When you say the altright, define altright to me. You define it. Go ahead. Define it for me. Lets go. Senator mccain defined them as the same groups excuse me. What about the altleft that came charging at the, as you say, the altright. Do they have any semblance of guilt . Not all of those people were neosenatedies or White Supremacists. Those people were also there because they wanted to protest the taking down of a statue of robert e. Lee. Excuse me. And you take a look at some of the groups and you see and you know it if you were honest reporters, which in many cases you are not. But many were there to protest the taking down of the statue of robert e. Lee. I notice that Stonewall Jackson is coming down. Is i George Washington next week and Thomas Jefferson the week after . You really have to ask yourself where does it stop. But they were there to protest excuse me. You take a look at the night before, they were there to protest the taking down of the statue of robert e. Lee. They showed up in charlottesville excuse me. You had some very bad people in that group. But you also had people that were very fine people on both sides. You had people in that group excuse me. Excuse me. I saw the same pictures adds you did. You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down to them a very very important statue and the renaming of a park from robert e. Lee to another name. You had many people in that group other than neonazis and white nationalists and the press has treated them absolutely unfairly. Were saying that the press treated white nationalists unfairly . No. There were people in that rally, if you look, there were people protesting very quietly the taking down of the statue of robert e. Lee. You had a lot of people in that group that were there to innocently protest and very legally protest. After the president s remarks today praising the white supremacist gathering in charlottesville, virginia this weekend, this became another one of those days where there was condemnation of the president from democrats and observeobser miemtd condemnation of the president from members of his own Political Party. It was an interesting thing that happened late this even, early this evening when some white house officials tried to distance themselves from the president s remarks as well, at least one senior official anonymously telling nbc news that members of the president s team, stunned by the president s words today. This one senior white house official telling reporters, telling nbc news that the president went rogue, that there was no expectation among the white house staff that the president was going to make remarks on this subject at all. And as much as some white house official might want us to believe that, its clear that that account was not true. The Associated Press caught this High Resolution shot of the president folding up notes clearly about the white supremacist rally and sticking them into his suit jacket pocket before he started taking questions on this. The president was not there to talk about infrastructure. He was obviously intending as well to talk about this matter today. He had prepared to talk about this matter today. White house staff would say that this was completely shocking to them, that he went rogue, he wasnt supposed to touch the subject. Those members of the white house staff are covering for themselves and inventing something that happened today that makes them look better that is not actually what happened. And this was a lot of things today. It was not apparently a mistake. It has to stop being treated as a surprise. This was not the president accidentally blirting into something that sounded like sympathy for people with unpopulated political views. This is on purpose. The president building up and trying to center up in american politics a long Standing Force in White American politics and culture that we have been trained to think of as a fringe thing. But it does have a very long history and it does have real force. The president is not messing up here. He did not trip and accidentally praise White Supremacists and ke neonazis who actually killed somebody that week. He is building up something that was a long Standing Force for political power and terror in this country for generations and he is now doing what he can to help them come back. And partisan affiliations come and gone, right . The party having the huge fight over the klan in 1924 was the party of the civil rights act. Parties change, Party Affiliations change, ideological ie laneses come and go, candidates come and go to the point that we cant remember the names of most president ial candidates not too long down the road in history. Whether you voted for trump or not, wh you have a partisan affiliation or not, whether your own family has ever lived through the terror that is this violent racist element of american culture, this persistent violent racist almost in american poculture is a real thing that weve lived through before as a country. And it waxes and waynes but it has never really gone away. 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When someone asserts that the holocaust never took place, then i dont believe that person ever deserves one iota of public trust. And when someone has so recently endorsed naziism, it is inconceivable that such a person can legitimately aspire to leadership in a leadership role in a free society. President george h. W. Bush speak in 1981. He was weighing in on what was then the louisiana governors race between democrat Edwin Edwards and a republican named david duke, the former grand whatever of the ku klux klan. David duke and Edwin Edwards were running neck in neck in that race. But the sitting president of the United States threw his weight against david duke as the candidate of his own party, disowned him, denounced him, duke ended up losing that race in a landslide. And thats one way to do it. Today we saw a very different approach. Joining us now is president ial historian. Im really glad you could be here. Me too, rachel. As a historian, what was your reaction . How did you absorb these comments today from President Trump and how important do you think they are given his past history on the subject in. I was completely horrified and i think its a departure from what almost every other president of the United States has done. Because, most president s understand that, you know, its not in the contusiostitution. The president has a job number one, this is a country