We take a step back from all the Trump headlines to look at how we got here. Later in the show, historian Nancy MacLean talks about the roots of the right’s stealth plan for America, bringing together the Koch Brothers and their libertarian economic policy advocacy with segregationist opposition to civil rights. Nancy is an award-winning historian and the William H. Chafe Professor of history and public policy at Duke University. Her book “Democracy in Chains” was named the “most valuable political book of the year” on The Nation’s progressive honor roll.
But first, Fred Trump and the KKK of the 1920s. The group had millions of members outside the South. It targeted Catholics and Jews as well as blacks, and had impressive success at electing governors and congressmen. It passed anti-immigrant restrictions that remained in effect until 1965. And Fred Trump, the president’s father, was arrested as a young man at a Klan march in New York City. Historian Linda Gordon explains—her new book is ‘The Second Coming of the KKK: The Ku Klux Klan and the American Political Tradition’.