A 60 Minutes reporter and an avowed white nationalist have had a heated clash during an episode in which the Ku Klux Klan claimed the election of US President Donald Trump had helped their cause.

Journalist Liz Hayes travelled to the US to meet with white nationalists, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and other extremist hate groups.

Hayes spoke with Jared Taylor, a 65-year-old Yale graduate who founded the white nationalist magazine American Renaissance .

The veteran reporter suggested to Mr Taylor that his publication and rhetoric were divisive and disseminated hate speech.

Mr Taylor, who has published debunked claims that white people have higher IQs than other races and railed against interracial marriage, was furious with Hayes.

“Elizabeth, have I said anything at all that suggests I hate anyone?” Mr Taylor said.

“You really understand nothing.

“I’m disappointed in you. I’m disappointed in you.”

Hayes hit back and stood by her comment Mr Taylor was a “divider and a hater spreading hate conversation”.

“I’m ok with your disappointment,” Hayes said.

“Human beings don’t seem to come first to you. Colour seems to come first to you.”

Earlier in the episode, Hayes held a clandestine meeting with members of the Orange County Ku Klux Klan in a nondescript highway motel in California.

The KKK’s California Grand Dragon, Will Quigg, agreed Mr Trump’s election had been a help to his notorious hate group’s cause.

“With Donald Trump as our president, it has given the white people, especially the white Christian people, a voice,” Mr Quigg said.

Fellow KKK members, the father and daughter duo of Pastor Thomas Robb and Rachel Pendergraft, agreed Mr Trump’s immigration policies had helped their cause.

“He helped legitimise this message,” Ms Pendergraft, who hosts a program with her father titled White Resistance News , told Hayes.

“It gave people the courage to say, ‘Hey, look. If he’s able to become president of the United States, then that gives me the courage to tell my friends and my neighbours that hey, I believe this and I believe that.’

“The man who holds the highest office in the land, he shares the same concerns as I do.”