President Trump challenges 60 Minutes to do exposé on disgraced SPLC after revelations they funded Charlottesville, KKK

President Donald Trump sat down for a 60 Minutes with Norah O'Donnell following a shooting at the White House Correspondents Dinner on Saturday night. In the conversation, he suggested to O'Donnell that the news magazine do an exposé on the Southern Poverty Law Center, which was recently indicted on various fraud charges for having funded members of the KKK and Charlottesville "Unite the Right" attendees.

"He was part of a group called The Wide Awakes. He had attended a No Kings protest in California," O'Donnell said, referencing what is known about the alleged shooter, Cole Allen, who traveled to Washington, DC from Los Angeles via rail. "What did security tell you about what could have been his motive?"

"The reason you have people like that is you have people doing 'No Kings.' I'm not a king. What I am— if I was a king, I wouldn't be dealing with you. No, I'm not a king. I don't laugh, I see these 'No Kings,' which are funded just like the Southern Law was funded. You saw all that? Southern Law financing the KKK and lots of other radical, terrible groups."

The Department of Justice announced last week that a Grand Jury had delivered an indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center, founded in 1971 to gain justice for those whose civil rights were violated. The indictment revealed that the SPLC had funded numerous racist groups, the same racist groups that they splashed across their hate watch. They used donor money to fund the groups they then sought donor money to fight.

"And then they go out and they say, 'Oh, we've got to stop the KKK,'" Trump said. "And yet they give him hundreds of thousands and even millions of dollars. It's a total scam run by the Democrats. It shows you that like Charlottesville, Charlottesville was all funded by the Southern Law that was a Southern Law deal too, and it was done to make me look bad, and it turned out to be a total fake."

The 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, VA was over the public statues honoring the failed Confederacy, the Southern, losing side of the American Civil War. Amid that conversation over whether or not the statues should be permitted to stand on public property, Trump said there were "fine people" on both sides of the argument. His comments were misconstrued by media and leading Democrats to mean that he was saying racists were very fine people, which he never said.

"It basically was a rigged election," Trump went on. "This was a part of the rigging of the election, and that's what you really should be doing. I mean, I hope one of your 60 Minute episodes, which really hasn't changed very much for the last few years, I'm surprised, but one of those episodes should be on Southern Law and the fact that they spent millions and millions of dollars on absolute far right, and just bad, bad groups.

"And then they'd use those groups, and they'd say, these are Republican groups, and we're coming to your rescue. And they're the ones that have funded it, and they're the ones that keep them going pretty soon. It's pretty sad. Do you think it's pretty sad, Norah?" Trump asked.

"The allegations and the indictment laid out by the—"

"They're not just allegations, these are facts, okay, these are facts. I mean, they have checks to the Ku Klux Klan and many others, and then they're saying how bad they are and blaming the Republican Party and Republicans. These are not just allegations, but go ahead."