President Donald Trump, White supremacist sympathizer

Donald Trump

There’s no question mark at the end of the post title, for there can be no doubt (not that reasonable people still had any). It’s the only conclusion to draw from the sequence of events and statements over the last few days, culminating in today’s singularly atrocious press conference.

First came his initial response to the Charlottesville, Virginia violence – White supremacists marching, Nazi flags waving, fighting with anti-fascism protestors, murder.

On Aug. 12, 2017, Donald Trump stood up at his private golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, and All Lives Matter’d a Nazi rally. “We’re closely following the terrible events unfolding in Charlottesville, Virginia,” Trump said. “We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence. On many sides.”

That Trump would first react to fascist racists showing their colors in broad daylight with prevarication and a false equivalence is hardly surprising, given his decades-long track record of blatant and inarguable racism. The man first made headlines by discriminating against Blacks in the ’70s, and it’s only gone downhill from there.

Nonetheless, the backlash was swift and severe. The media had a field day. A horde of politicians on both sides of the aisle roasted him, including plenty of Republicans – many of them had family who had fought the original Nazis, or had done so themselves. Corporate executives on his “manufacturing council” abandoned ship. The White House itself had to release a statement clarifying – really a “he forgot to mention” – that Trump actually doesn’t like violent racial supremacist groups, since Trump evidently wouldn’t say so himself.

Who didn’t hate Trump’s feckless equivocation? White supremacists and neo-Nazis.

The popular white supremacist site Daily Stormer called Trump’s remarks “really good,” noting that he “didn’t attack us.” They were also pleased he ignored a question about white supremacists after making his statement.

Still, the blowback was bad enough that Trump returned to the podium – after plenty of prodding from his own staff – for take two.

After a few minutes of throat-clearing about his feats on behalf of the American worker, Trump reiterated, almost word for word, his language from the weekend. “As I said on Saturday,” he told reporters, “we condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence.” Trump then continued: “And as I have said many times before, no matter the color of our skin,” we all “salute the same great flag. … Racism is evil and those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs.”

Oh, okay, then. Though maybe next time Trump could try to sound like he means it.

Well, he just got his chance at a presser today. And really, he should’ve stuck with his previous bland statements, since those gave him plausible deniability that his latest words really, truly don’t.

It began with him restating the same “both sides” pussyfooting that made people call for a do-over in the first place:

“I think there is blame on both sides. You look at both sides. I think there is blame object on both sides,” Trump said during remarks in Trump Tower today.

“You had some very bad people in that group. You also had some very fine people on both sides,” he said.

Very fine people. On both sides.

The sides being, of course, people who want to trigger a “race war” to banish or wipe out all non-Whites whom they believe are less than human … versus people who oppose those things.

I wonder which “fine people” amongst the pro-Nazi crowd Trump was referring to. Was it the Nazi-flag-bearers? Or was it the ones who maced peaceful protestors? Or the ones who beat up Black counter-protestors? Maybe it was the dude who rammed his car into a crowd, killing one and injuring over a dozen more?

Trump then tried to pretend he didn’t know what the alt-Right was, and really, what about the violent liberals?

Trump took issue with a reporter's characterization of part of the crowd being part of the so-called alt-right.

"When you say the alt-right, you define it. Go ahead. Define it for me," he said.

"What about the alt-left that came charging at, as you say, at the alt-right? Do they have any assemblage of guilt? What about the fact that they came charging with clubs in their hands swinging clubs? Do they have any problem? I think they do," he said. It's unclear what Trump meant by the "alt-left."

Of course, “alt-Left” is the pseudo-label used by center-leaning liberals and Right-wingers who try to set up a false equivalence by comparing people on the far-Left, who support notions like single-payer healthcare and a $15/hour minimum wage, with people on the far-Right who support notions like White nationalism and kicking out all immigrants. It’s an odious mendacity that ought to shame anyone who parrots it so hard that they sit down and shut up until they learn something.

It’s really no surprise that Trump would use it. That ought also to make the anti-Trump-but-also-anti-Bernie-Sanders crowd think twice before using it, if they had any integrity.

And on the tiki-torch protest the previous night on the University of Virginia campus:

He went on to question why the statue of Civil War Gen. Robert E. Lee, which prompted the protest in the first place, was being removed.

"You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down, of to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name,” he said.

"George Washington as a slave owner. Was George Washington a slave owner? So will George Washington now lose his status? Are we going to take down -- excuse me," Trump said, cutting off a reporter who tried to interject, "Are we going to take down statues to George Washington? How about Thomas Jefferson? What do you think of Thomas Jefferson? You like him. Good. Are we going to take down his statue? He was a major slave owner.”

Pardon this atheist for saying: Jesus Fucking Christ.

I’m sure an actual American historian could tear Trump a few new ones over this, so I’ll stick to the basics: Yes, the Founding Fathers were slave-owners. That’s unquestionably terrible. The reason the US has statues of them, however, is because they also founded the damn country and set up arguably the most democratic system of government of its day.

Robert E. Lee was a secessionist traitor and cruel fool whose modern mythos was fabricated out of whole cloth to support the revisionist “Lost Cause”.

Spot the difference?

And about those aggrieved statue-defenders, he had this to say:

Trump said some pro-Confederate protesters were “protesting, very quietly, the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee” on Friday night. “You had a lot of people in that group who were there to innocently protest — and very legally protest. I don’t know if you know, they had a permit, the other group didn’t have a permit. So I only tell you this, there are two sides to a story.”

“Innocently protest”. By shouting “blood and soil” and “Jews will not replace us” and other Nazi classics. As one does.

You know, it’s possible, in theory, that Trump doesn’t actually condone White nationalists and other racists, and that he’s the victim of his own breathtaking lack of communication skills. It’s possible that his repeated equivocations between violent neo-Nazis and anti-fascism protestors are just the result of him being unable to find the right words, or that he genuinely thought his original statement condemning violence “on many sides” was meant to indicate his opposition to fascist thugs. It’s possible he truly is clueless about the term “alt-Right” – after all, he’s truly clueless about a great many things.

It’s all possible. But it’s not very bloody likely.

The National Review concludes:

Donald Trump loves people who love him, and the vile and vicious alt-right has loved him from the beginning. Today, he loved them right back.

Or, to summarize it all succinctly …

“Donald Trump, the sitting President of the United States, is a piece of shit.”
— Phil Plait

(some links via @fark & Joe.My.God.)