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Trump's failure to condemn Virginia neo-Nazis is shocking but not surprising
The president’s refusal to properly condemn the attack in Charlottesville is consistent with past comments and a divisive campaign that stoked hatred.....
No one should be shocked at the Charlottesville ambivalence of Donald Trump. Anyone claiming shock and surprise is flat out lying.
The vitriol in tweets and the divisive attitudes of Donald Trump have been painfully evident for a long time. Long enough that Americans can no longer claim sudden surprise and faux disgust.
The president’s refusal to properly condemn the attack in Charlottesville is consistent with past comments and a divisive campaign that stoked hatred.....
By David Smith in Washington
Monday 14 August 2017
Puppets of Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions appear at a weekend protest in Chicago
Speaking at his golf club in New Jersey on Saturday after a man rammed a car into protesters, Trump said: “We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides. On many sides.” The president added defensively: “It’s been going on for a long time in our country. Not Donald Trump, not Barack Obama. This has been going on for a long, long time.” No mention of racism. No mention of white supremacists. No mention of the Ku Klux Klan. Instead, the repetition of “on many sides”, a characteristic Trump verbal tic used for emphasis. It served merely to emphasize his tin ear and imply moral equivalence between neo-Nazi demonstrators and those who took to the streets to oppose them. There were echoes of some white South African politicians who still occasionally float the notion that colonialism wasn’t all bad. The Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi publication, expressed delight: “Trump comments were good. He didn’t attack us. He just said the nation should come together. Nothing specific against us. He said that we need to study why people are so angry, and implied that there was hate … on both sides! So he implied the antifa [anti-fascists] are haters. There was virtually no counter-signaling of us at all.”
Under growing pressure on Sunday, an unnamed White House spokesperson issued a fresh statement, insisting that the president “condemns all forms of violence, bigotry and hatred, and of course that includes white supremacists, KKK, neo-Nazi and all extremist groups”. But Trump himself remained unusually silent, in person and on Twitter. The stance was shocking but not surprising. Trump’s opinionated statements and policy positions are all over the place, except on two issues: Vladimir Putin and white nationalists. Even as cabinet secretaries and members of Congress condemn and sanction the Russian leader, the president is unfailingly reluctant to criticize him directly. Even as his daughter Ivanka tweeted condemnation of white supremacists and neo-Nazis on Sunday, the president was, his critics say, committing crimes of omission. A president’s actions and words can only do so much, but they can create a climate in which certain groups, attitudes and mindsets flourish. Trump, 71, will not switch course now, for as Michelle Obama once observed: “Being president doesn’t change who you are. It reveals who you are.” It remains to be seen whether many Republicans will feel a moral obligation, or a willingness, to challenge who he is.
No one should be shocked at the Charlottesville ambivalence of Donald Trump. Anyone claiming shock and surprise is flat out lying.
The vitriol in tweets and the divisive attitudes of Donald Trump have been painfully evident for a long time. Long enough that Americans can no longer claim sudden surprise and faux disgust.
