David Duke. Photo: Wikipedia.

A major Jewish human-rights group called on presidential hopeful Donald Trump on Thursday to officially disassociate himself from white supremacist David Duke following antisemitic comments made by the latter in support of the Trump campaign. 

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) said in a statement that the “onus is on Trump to distance himself from the antisemitism of David Duke,” who said on his radio show on Wednesday that opposition to Trump is orchestrated by Republican and Jewish elites who he claimed control America.

“I think these Jewish extremists have made a terribly crazy miscalculation, because all they’re going to be doing by doing a ‘Never Trump’ movement is exposing their alien, their anti-American, anti-American majority position…They’re going to push people more into an awareness that the neocons are the problem, that these Jewish supremacists who control our country are the real problem, and the reason why America is not great,” he said, adding “Jewish chutzpah knows no bounds.”

“The Trump campaign at a whole series of levels is a great opportunity for us to expose the people who really run the Republican Party, who run the Democratic Party, who run the political establishment and who are leading us all to disaster,” Duke said. “Even though Trump is not explicitly talking about European-Americans, he is implicitly talking about the interests of European-Americans.”

Neo-Nazi Kevin MacDonald, who was a guest on Duke’s Wednesday show, voiced his agreement, adding that Trump is “appealing implicitly to White America.”

According to ADL CEO Jonathan A. Greenblatt, “David Duke’s latest remarks — smearing Jews and Jewish Republicans specifically — are as unsurprising as they are hateful.” Greenblatt called on Trump to make it “unequivocally clear that he rejects those sentiments and that there is no room for Duke and antisemitism in his campaign and in society.”

Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard, is notorious for his antisemitic rhetoric and has been described by the ADL as “one of the nation’s’ most recognizable white supremacists.” In February, Duke told his listeners that voting against Trump should be considered “treason to your heritage.”

“Mr. Trump can and should speak up now. If not, his silence will speak volumes,” Greenblatt said.