Diana West Tweeted this, in light of Trump's "failure to disavow":

She's quoting M. Stanton Evans's The Liberal Establishment, published in 1965 by the Devin-Adair company:

Senator Goldwater and Representative Miller, for example, were often challenged to "disavow" the Ku Klux Klan and the John Birch Society. Lyndon Johnson, on the other hand, was not challenged by the media to disavow Americans for Democratic Action or the Socialist Party or the tacit support given him by the Communists. On the eve of the California primary Howard K. Smith, discussing the influence of the John Birch Society in that state, off-handedly described Goldwater as "their man." What would have been the outcry if a newscaster, discussing Communist interest in the election, had casually referred to Lyndon Johnson as "their man"?

As it happened, of course, the Liberal media did not even discuss the Communists' position in the election, much less pin them to Johnson. Similarly with Norman Thomas and his fellow Socialists. While Thomas campaigned for the Johnson-Humphrey ticket, no Liberal newsman called on these worthies to disavow his support. In short, the media effectively defined the scope of the extremist issue by limiting it to people backing Goldwater, and therefore defined it completely in Johnson's favor.