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Trump Says He's Not Quite Sure Why White Supremacists Love Him

Alt-right white pride types are "not a group I want to energize," the president-elect said to his least favorite newspaper.

Photo via Flickr user Gage Skidmore

During his canceled-and-then-quickly-uncanceled meeting at the New York Times on Tuesday, President-elect Donald Trump said that alt-right white supremacists are "not a group I want to energize," and disavowed them.

The Times asked the president-elect specifically about the alt-right conference that took place in DC this past weekend, where white nationalists and Tila Tequila gathered. Some threw up Nazi salutes and discussed the "burden of the white man." Trump, apparently, can't quite grok why they'd be stoked on his winning the White House.

"If they are energized, I want to look into it and find out why," he continued.

Trump faced a similar query during his interview on 60 Minutes last week, when he was asked about the outpouring of hate crimes that have occurred since his election. Trump responded roughly the same way in that case, offering a terse "stop it" to any violent fans like a guy trying to train his dog to quit peeing on the rug.

The president-elect also told the paper that Steve Bannon—the former head of Breitbart whose wife claimed he once wanted his kids to change schools over an excess of Jewish students—is "having a hard time" with the negative uproar surrounding his appointment as White House chief strategist.