With the spotlight on House Majority Leader Steve Scalise as he made a short-lived bid to become speaker of the House, a misleading claim about the Louisiana Republican attending a white supremacist conference has been making the rounds once again.
The claim was given new air this week after Representative Nancy Mace (R., S.C.) said Wednesday she would not support Scalise’s speakership bid because he “attended a white supremacist conference and compared himself to David Duke.” Scalise dropped out of the running Thursday evening due to lack of support.
The allegation centers on Scalise’s alleged appearance at the European-American Unity and Rights Organization (EURO) conference in May 2002, a racist conference organized by Kenny Knight, who served as David Duke’s longtime political adviser.
However, Knight told Slate in 2014 — when the claim came to light amid Scalise’s efforts to become GOP whip — that it is “totally incorrect” to say Scalise spoke at the convention.
At the time, Knight headed the Jefferson Heights Civic Association, which covered the neighborhood where both Knight and Scalise lived.
With the conference slated to begin in the afternoon, Knight said he used the room he had reserved in the hotel to host a civic association meeting in the hours before the conference began.
“It was my room to do what I want with it,” he said, explaining that the meeting was not at all related to the EURO conference.
Scalise, a representative from the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office, and a person from the American Red Cross appeared at the civic association meeting at Knight’s invitation, Knight told Slate.
“He spoke early in the day to a contingent of people, prior to the conference kicking off. He was not there as a guest speaker at the conference,” Knight told the outlet.
Knight’s ex-girlfriend corroborated his account in comments to Slate.
Lamar White Jr., the blogger who first broke the story about Scalise attending the conference, previously addressed the situation in a post on X saying that Scalise “isn’t a white supremacist.”
“I earnestly believe he was duped by Kenny Knight,” White said back in 2017.
“Kenny Knight is a conman,” he added. “He’s in jail now. He hid from reporters. And then he lied to them.”
D. Stephen Voss, an associate professor of political science at the University of Kentucky and journalist who has covered Duke’s political career, debunked Scalise’s alleged “association” with Duke for the Missouri Independent. He reported that the extent of Scalise’s relationship with the former KKK grand wizard was that Scalise lived in the same neighborhood as Knight and they were on friendly terms.
“No record of Scalise and Duke meeting, sharing a stage, or being in the same organization. No record of Scalise praising Duke. When asked, Scalise condemned Duke’s bigotry,” Voss wrote.
And the claims that Scalise “compared himself” to Duke are equally dubious. The comment was allegedly made in the mid-1990s and went unreported until years later, when journalist Stephanie Grace shared the remark and said she was “going from memory,” Voss wrote.
“The phrase is a distant recollection from a novice reporter, one horrified by Duke; it cannot validly be considered a Scalise quotation. We have no way to evaluate the words Scalise used, let alone what else he might have said to clarify them. It’s an accusation without evidence,” he added.
Nonetheless, Democrats quickly seized on the narrative.
“Steve Scalise once called himself ‘David Duke without the baggage,'” said Representative Cori Bush, a member of the progressive “Squad.”
“In 2002, he gave a speech to a white supremacist group founded by the former KKK grand wizard. This is who MAGA Republicans are nominating for Speaker,” she wrote in a post on X.
Other lawmakers have come to Scalise’s defense each time the allegations have resurfaced.
Congressman Troy Carter said in a post on X on Thursday, “Earlier today I was asked if Congressman Scalise was racist. I’ve known the man for 25 years and we have stark ideological differences. We have often agreed to disagree. In that time, however, I have never seen him display racial intolerance. I count him amongst my friends and I wouldn’t if I felt otherwise.”
In 2014, then-Congressman Cedric Richmond, a Democrat from Louisiana and former chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, said he didn’t believe Scalise “has a racist bone in his body.”
“Steve and I have worked on issues that benefit poor people, black people, white people, Jewish people. I know his character,” he told the New Orleans Times-Picayune.