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Joe Scarborough: Trump's KKK ignorance 'disqualifying'

Donald Trump's failure to explicitly disavow the Ku Klux Klan and former Grand Wizard David Duke is "disqualifying," Joe Scarborough declared on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Monday.

"It’s breathtaking. That is disqualifying right there. To say you don’t know about the Ku Klux Klan? You don’t know about David Duke?" the co-host said during the opening segment of the show after remarking upon Trump's feigned ignorance of the group and Duke during an interview with CNN on Sunday, two days after he explicitly disavowed the group in a news conference.

The "most stunning thing" about the latest development, said Scarborough, a southerner himself, is that the latest maneuver "isn’t buying him a single vote."

“I mean is he really so stupid that he thinks Southerners aren’t offended by the Ku Klux Klan and David Duke? Is he really so ignorant of Southern voters that he thinks this is the way to their heart — to go neutral, to play Switzerland when you’re talking about the Klan?" Scarborough asked. "And to say he doesn’t know enough information about the Klan to condemn them — exactly what does Donald Trump expect to learn in the next 24 hours about the Klan.”

Scarborough published an op-ed in The Washington Post to that effect on Monday morning, asking whether "this how the party of Abraham Lincoln dies?" Scarborough and co-host Mika Brzezinski, who have been accused of cozying up to Trump, were adamant in their disgust for the candidate throughout the first hour of the show.

Despite his refusal to disavow the KKK and David Duke on Sunday, Scarborough predicted that it would have no effect on Trump's finish in tomorrow's primaries, many of which are in former Confederate states. Scarborough later acted as Trump to demonstrate the facility with which the outspoken magnate could have dispensed with any ambiguity about his feelings.

"'Oh my God, he's a repugnant human being. I refused in 2000 to even run as a Reform Party candidate, 'cause he was so repugnant. He's a disgusting human being,'" Scarborough said, imagining how Trump could have responded to CNN's Jake Tapper on Sunday.