While the mainstream media and top Democrats are jumping all over Donald Trump for not disavowing former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke quickly enough (after he has already disavowed him more than once), they have ignored the history of top Democrats with a KKK leader.

After the passing of Democrat Sen. Robert Byrd, a former Klansman, in 2010, former President Bill Clinton, current President Barack Obama and Democrat presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton all waxed poetic about how fantastic he was.

In the 1940s, Byrd started a chapter of the KKK in Sophia, West Virginia, where he recruited 150 members and was unanimously elected Exalted Cyclops.

In a letter to Senator Theodore G. Bilbo in 1944, he expressed his reluctance to fight in a military with black soldiers.

“I shall never fight in the armed forces with a negro by my side,” he wrote. “Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds.”

He shared a similar sentiment that same year in a letter to the Grand Wizard of the KKK.

“The Klan is needed today as never before, and I am anxious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia and in every state in the nation,” he wrote.

Like Duke, who has supported Trump, Byrd left the Klan; but unlike Duke, Byrd is revered by his Democrat colleagues.

During a eulogy for the former senator, President Obama said of him: “He was a Senate icon, he was a (Democrat) party leader, he was an elder statesman and he was my friend.”

“Our country has lost a true American original, my friend and mentor Robert C. Byrd,” Hillary Clinton said in a video.

“From my first day in the Senate I sought out his guidance,” she added. “As secretary of State, I continued to rely on his advice and counsel.”

And former President Bill Clinton tried to sanitize Byrd’s association with the Klan.

“He once had a fleeting association with the Ku Klux Klan,” he said. “He was a country boy from the hills and hollows of West Virginia. He was trying to get elected.”

Fleeting association?

That’s an interesting way to describe a man who recruited 150 members to the organization and was unanimously elected to a leadership role.

Social media has had much to say about it.

@Rockprincess818 when will the democrat party apologize for starting the KKK? when will they apologize for enslaving blacks? — A Tea Party Ally (@Tea_Alliance) February 29, 2016

Hillary kissing former KKK Grand Wizard Dem Sen. Robert Byrd. But she’s a Dem. Gets away w/this. https://t.co/vWMserQsuD — Crystal Wright (@GOPBlackChick) February 29, 2016

Funny, HRC hugs and kisses KKK member Robert Byrd who filibustered the 1964 Civil Rights Act .. She called him her mentor … S-I-L-E-N-C-E — Ray Richardson (@RayRichardsonJr) March 1, 2016

Media Savages Trump Over Duke, Ignores Hillary Praising Former KKK Member Robert Byrd https://t.co/4X7QEyXNOa via @realalexjones — ahtlam (@ahtlam) March 1, 2016