Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) told lawmakers in a private briefing Tuesday that the Ku Klux Klan is “the military wing of the Democratic Party,” CNN reported, citing an audio recording of his comments. “The KKK in modern times, a lot of young people think somehow it’s a right-wing organization when it is the military wing of the Democratic Party: decidedly, unabashedly, racist and antisemitic,” Perry said. A subject of the Department of Justice’s Jan. 6 investigation, Perry also said that the “great replacement theory,” the conspiracy theory that white Americans are intentionally being replaced by minorities, was “real.” “What is happening now is we’re importing people into the country that want to be in America … but have no interest in being Americans, and that’s very different and to disparage the comments is to chill the conversation so that we can continue to bring in more people that we never met that are un-American.” In a statement to CNN after learning his comments had leaked, Perry accused “the radical Left” of “twist[ing] facts” about what he said.
