In 1961, TV talk show host David Susskind conducted a series of interviews with former President Harry Truman in Truman's hometown of Independence, Missouri. After picking Truman up at his home to take him to the Truman Presidential Library for the interviews over a number of days, Susskind asked Truman why he hadn't been invited into the home. According to presidential historian Michael Beschloss, Truman flatly told Susskind, "This is Bess's house" and that there had never been nor would there ever be a Jewish guest in there. He next said to Susskind, "I know that Jews are supposed to be G-d's chosen people but I think G-d had better taste". Beschloss also reports that in a private letter to his wife in 1957, Truman referred to New York City as “the U.S. capital of Israel.”
The latest revelation follows other unpleasant discoveries about the former president. Four years ago, researchers found a Truman diary entry from 1947 which declared: “The Jews, I find, are very, very selfish. They care not how many Estonians, Latvians, Finns, Poles, Yugoslavs or Greeks get murdered or mistreated as Displaced Persons as long as the Jews get special treatment. Yet when they have power, physical, financial or political neither Hitler nor Stalin has anything on them for cruelty or mistreatment to the underdog.”
Prof. Michael Cohen’s book, Truman and Israel, previously revealed Truman’s remarks calling New York City “kike town”, referring to his Jewish friend and business partner, Eddie Jacobson, as his “Jew clerk” and writing to Bess about someone in a poker game who had “screamed like a Jewish merchant”.
In 1924, Harry S. Truman was a judge in Jackson County, Missouri, which includes Kansas City. Truman was up for reelection, and his friends Edgar Hinde and Spencer Salisbury advised him to join the Klan. The Klan was politically powerful in Jackson County, and two of Truman's opponents in the Democratic primary had Klan support. Truman refused at first, but paid the Klan's $10 membership fee, and a meeting with a Klan officer was arranged. He joined; he later claimed he quit after he got bored. My tuchis!
reference: 1.^ Beschloss, Michael R. (2007). Presidential Courage: Brave Leaders and How They Changed America 1789-1989. New York: Simon & Schuster. p. 210.