Donald Trump, stung by Hillary Clinton’s allegations that he is linked to extreme right-wing groups, pointed out Saturday that the Democratic presidential nominee once called a former Ku Klux Klan official a “mentor.”

CNN reported that Trump used his Twitter account to retweet a message by two of his African-American supporters, Lynette Hardaway and Rochelle Richardson, that stated: “Crooked Hillary getting desperate. On TV bashing Trump. @CNN, she forgot how she said a KKK member was her mentor.”

The sisters told CNN that they were referring to former Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia, who died in 2010. Clinton called the lawmaker “a true American original; my friend and mentor.” Hardaway and Richardson argued that Trump “can’t help who embraces his campaign, but Hillary Clinton could’ve helped who she embraced.”

Another Trump fan, Scottie Nell Hughes, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper: “(Clinton) sat there and praised Sen. Byrd, saying that he was her mentor, that he should be respected, and he was a leader of the KKK.”

In the early 1940s, Byrd was the leader of a KKK chapter in his home state, according to CNN. In his autobiography, he claimed to have been involved with the white-supremacist group because he agreed with its opposition to communism. He later disavowed the Klan, calling his former membership “the greatest mistake of my life.”

Source: CNN

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