That rule being, of course, “when you find yourself in one, stop digging.”
It’s a rule that Trump breaks repeatedly, but rarely as egregiously as his steadily deteriorating response to the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, this past weekend. That response consisted of:
- Silence on Friday, and into Saturday morning, even as the situation continued to deteriorate (as captured so eloquently by J K Rowling).
- Issuing a set of statements Saturday afternoon ranging from pablum to vague accusations that “many sides, many sides” were responsible.
- Once criticism over a lack of calling out white supremacists, Neo-Nazis, and KKKers at the heart of this got too heated, you finally mid-day Monday critiqued those groups by name.
- Later on Monday, cheesed off at folk still criticizing his overall performance, he blamed it all on the “truly bad people” of the “Fake News Media”.
- And then yesterday …
… he basically reverted back to your original moral equivalency statement, only this time not in a calm, sad way, but with belligerence and anger. Which may have been in part because he really, really wanted to talk about infrastructure, and the press really, really wanted to hear him talk more on this subject, because clearly he was on the path to self-destruction here.
And they got what they wanted, hand-delivered by Trump.
So, as we recall at what happened in Charlottesville (timelines here and here and here), here was the majority of Trump’s press conference yesterday.
REPORTER: Why did you wait so long to denounce neo-Nazis?
TRUMP: I didn’t wait long. I didn’t wait long. I didn’t wait long.
The first protests (and scuffles) started on Friday evening. The violence continued throughout Saturday. Trump didn’t call out Neo-Nazis until mid-day Monday.
I wanted to make sure, unlike most politicians, that what I said was correct, not make a quick statement.
When have we ever known Trump to use caution and lengthy consideration before making a statement?
The statement I made on Saturday, the first statement, was a fine statement, …
… in which he blamed the violence as coming “on many sides, many sides.”
… but you don’t make statements that direct unless you know the fact. And it takes a little while to get the facts. You still don’t know the facts. And it is a very, very important process to me. It is a very important statement. So I don’t want to go quickly and just make a statement for the sake of making a political statement.
But Trump rarely waits for all facts (which he seems to think people still don’t know). And he makes off the cuff statements all the time without consideration of process or how important they are.
Indeed, the word is that Trump’s response here was all off the cuff, unprepared, and nothing that his staff coached him on (much to their groaning displeasure).
I want to know the facts. If you go back to my statement, in fact I brought it. I brought it. As I said on remember this, Saturday, we condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence. It has no place in America. And then I went on from there.
Calling out “hatred, bigotry and violence” in general is not denouncing Neo-Nazis. Especially when he also through in that “many sides, many sides” comment.
Now here is the thing. Excuse me, excuse me. Take it nice and easy. Here is the thing, when I make a statement, I like to be correct. I want the facts. This event just happened. A lot of the event didn’t happen yet as we were speaking. This event just happened. Before I make a statement, I need the facts, so I don’t want to rush into a statement.
Ha!
So making the statement when I made it was excellent.
Of course it was.
In fact, the young woman who I hear is a fantastic young woman and it was on NBC, her mother wrote me and said through I guess Twitter, social media, the nicest things, and I very much appreciated that. I hear she was a fine, really actually an incredible young woman, but her mother on Twitter, thanked me for what I said.
Apparently, Susan Bro, the mother of the woman killed by one of the white supremacist protesters, did in fact express appreciation for Trump’s “denouncing those who promote violence and hatred.”
Honestly, if the press were not fake and if it was honest, the press would have said what I said was very nice. – excuse me – unlike you and unlike the media, before I make a statement, I like to know the facts.
Ha!
REPORTERS YELLING INDISTINCTLY
TRUMP: They didn’t, they didn’t. They don’t.
REPORTERS CONTINUE YELLING INDISTINCTLY
TRUMP: How about, how about, how about a couple of infrastructure questions.
Trump had no luck turning the discussion back to infrastructure.
REPORTER: The CEO of Walmart said you missed a critical opportunity to help bring the country together. Did you?
TRUMP: Not at all. I think the country — look, you take a look. I’ve created over a million jobs since I have been president. The country is booming, the stock market is setting record, we have the highest employment numbers we’ve ever had in the history of our country. We are doing record business.
Trump tried to make this all about … him?
We have the highest levels of enthusiasm, so the head of Walmart, who I know, who’s a very nice guy, was making a political statement.
And how does that make any sense?
I mean, I would do it the same way, you know why?
Because Donald Trump can never admit he did something wrong?
Because I want to make sure when I make a statement that the statement is correct. And there was no way – no way – of making a correct statement that early. I had to see the facts, unlike a lot of reporters, unlike a lot of reporter.
Have to get a slam in here about the media, of course.
I didn’t know David Duke was there. I wanted to see the facts.
So there’s this thing going on — protests turning into violence and scuffles and police and all that … and the President of the United States had no recourse or way to “see the facts” or get any information on what was happening, who was behind it, who was involved, then sitting around and waiting for the next Fox News bulletin. There was nobody he could call Friday night, or Saturday morning, to get more “facts”? In which case, he should fire all of his staff.
And the facts, as they started coming out, were very well-stated. In fact, everybody said his statement was beautiful.
Yes, that’s as incoherent as it sounds. And I believe that “his” refers to him, Trump.
Though, clearly, not everybody thought it was beautiful, since otherwise this wouldn’t have come up again, or have required clarification by the White House, or have needed to be spelled out more clearly by Trump on Monday.
If he would have made it sooner, that would have been good. I couldn’t have made it sooner, because I didn’t know all of the facts. Frankly, people still don’t know all of the facts.
What facts aren’t known, or are suspected of being not yet known, Trump does not specify.
It was very important – excuse me, excuse me. It was very important to me to get the facts out and correctly. Because if I would have made a fast statement and the first statement was made without knowing much other than what we were seeing.
There was, in fact, plenty of information already available. It’s difficult to avoid concluding that Trump simply did not want to make a statement more than some requisite vague condemnations of violence, etc.
The second statement was made after it with knowledge, with great knowledge.
Not just knowledge, mind you, but great knowledge.
There are still things – excuse me. There are still things that people don’t know.
Again, unspecified things that “people don’t know.”
I want to make a statement with knowledge, I wanted to know the facts, okay.
The more he keeps saying that, the sketchier it sounds.
REPORTER: Two questions: was this terrorism? […]
TRUMP: I think the driver of the car is a disgrace to himself, his family and this country. And that is – you can call it terrorism, you can call it murder. You can call it whatever you want. I would just call it as the fastest one to come up with a good verdict. That’s what I’d call it. And there is a question. Is it murder? Is it terrorism? Then you get into legal semantics. The driver of the car is a murderer, and what he did was a horrible, horrible, inexcusable thing.
Well, Trump somehow managed to condemn the guy who everyone, even the folk on the extreme right, seemed quick to back away from.
On the other hand, after having said he couldn’t possibly make any sort of statement about racists and Nazis until he had “facts,” he’s quick to bypass the whole “trial” thing and simply decree someone as guilty of murder and/or terrorism, whichever is “the fastest one to come up with a good verdict.” Trump has a habit of making extra-judicial decisions and then sticking with them.
After answering some questions about Steve Bannon, and then slamming John McCain for his health care vote, the press conference continued:
REPORTER: Senator McCain said that the alt-right is behind these attacks, and he linked that same group to those that perpetrated the attack in Charlottesville.
TRUMP: Well, I don’t know. I can’t tell you. I’m sure Senator McCain must know what he is talking about, but when you say the alt-right, define alt-right to me. You define it. Go ahead. Define it for me, come on, let’s go.
REPORTER: Senator McCain defined them as the same group.
TRUMP: Okay, what about the alt-left that came charging at [indiscernible] – excuse me – what about the alt-left that came charging at the, as you say, the alt right? Do they have any semblance of guilt?
And that’s when things really slid off the rails.
I’ll leave aside that some transcripts have him saying “alt-left that came charging at us.”
Trump then proceeded to drift back into the “all sides were at fault, but not everyone on one side was a bad person” thing:
TRUMP: What about this? What about the fact that they came charging – they came charging with clubs in their hands swinging clubs? Do they have any problem? I think they do.
While I won’t assert that everyone amongst the counter-protesters was a follower of MLK’s calls for peaceful resistance (though a large number were), the coverage of the events not only indicates that the majority of the violence was initiated by the gang of KKKers, white supremacists, white nationalists, and Neo-Nazis. And they were the ones who organized this hoe-down, and came armed for it.
TRUMP: As far as I’m concerned, that was a horrible, horrible day. Wait a minute, I’m not finished. I’m not finished, fake news. That was a horrible day.
More media bashing.
TRUMP: I will tell you something. I watched those very closely, much more closely than you people watched it.
Because he was gathering so many “facts.”
And you had, you had a group on one side that was bad. And you had a group on the other side that was also very violent. And nobody wants to say that, but I’ll say it right now. You had a group – you had a group on the other side that came charging in without a permit, and they were very, very violent.
Not only were they violent, they didn’t have a permit! I mean, we all know who are the real criminals here!
REPORTER: Do you think what you call the alt left is the same as neo-Nazis?
TRUMP: Those people – all of those people, excuse me – I’ve condemned neo-Nazis. I’ve condemned many different groups, but not all of those people were neo-Nazis, believe me. Not all of those people were white supremacists by any stretch.
REPORTER: Well, white nationalists –
TRUMP: Those people were also there, because they wanted to protest the taking down of a statue Robert E. Lee. So – excuse me – and you take a look at some of the groups and you see, and you’d know it if you were honest reporters, which in many cases you’re not. Many of those people were there to protest the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee.
Leaving aside the merits of statues to military leaders of a rebellion against the United States on behalf of the cause of chattel slavery …
… or that this statue of Lee was erected in the 1920s, in the Klan era of Virginia …
… this was not a rally of the “Daughters of the Confederacy” or “The Society for the Preservation of Bronze Equestrian Statuary” or the “Robert E. Lee Fan Club.” The planned removal of the statue (and renaming of the park it was in) was the initial germ of the idea for a protest, but the organizers of the shindig quickly made it into the “Unite the Right” gathering. Jason Kessler, the originator of the shindig, noted that it was “about an anti-white climate within the Western world and the need for white people to have advocacy like other groups do.” Richard Spencer, an alt-Right figure who rallied additional troops, said it wasn’t “just a Southern heritage festival” and that the statue removal was “a metaphor for something much bigger, and that is white dispossession and the de-legitimization of white people in this country and around the world.”
So, yeah, white supremacists, white nationalists, skinheads, KKKers, Neo-Nazis — the protesters seem to have been mostly the usual Gang of Deplorables. Their chants and shout weren’t “This statue fills me with pride for my Southern Heritage.” The flags they were flying didn’t look particularly patriotic (at least not for the patria Trump is supposed to be serving). Trump’s attempt to make them seem like art lovers isn’t in line the “facts.”
So this week, it’s Robert E. Lee, I noticed that Stonewall Jackson’s coming down. I wonder, is it George Washington next week? And is it Thomas Jefferson the week after. You know, you really do have to ask yourself, where does it stop?
Actually, a lot of people have asked themselves that, though the President doesn’t seem to have collected that particular fact.
Whose statues stay up and whose come down and when is a problem of history. But it’s not difficult to see that the causes of Lee and Washington are very different. Though Washington and Jefferson, to their discredit, certainly owned slaves, nobody erected statues to their cause as slaveholders. Lee’s slavery history is problematic (he appeared to both condemn slavery and to be a particularly harsh slaveholder), but he fought for the Confederacy, an institution that was focused on the right to own other human beings as chattel slaves. That is the core of his heritage, and either for that or for the cause of the Confederacy itself (whose flag festooned the protesters’ ranks, amidst swastikas and other white nationalist symbolism), local municipalities and individual states are certainly acting properly (and legally) to remove statues to him, and Jefferson Davis, and Stonewall Jackson.
TRUMP: But, they were there to protest – excuse me – you take a look the night before, they were there to protest the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee.
Carrying torches and chanting “Blood and soil!” “You will not replace us!” and “Jews will not replace us!”
TRUMP: Infrastructure question. Go ahead.
It was a valiant effort.
REPORTER: Does the statue of Robert E. Lee stay up?
TRUMP: I would say that’s up to a local town, community or the federal government, depending on where it is located.
Truest and most defensible thing Trump said.
But bear in mind that the Lee statue wasn’t being torn down by outside agitators or by some sort of federal law. The Charlottesville city council made the decision. And outsiders came to protest it with torches and rifles and clubs and shields in the name of a broader protest against whites not being treated as special snowflakes.
REPORTER: Are you against the Confederacy?
Sadly, Trump didn’t get to answer that one.
REPORTER: On race relations in America, do you think things have gotten worse or better since you took office with regard to race relationships?
TRUMP: I think they’ve gotten better or the same – look – they have been frayed for a long time, and you can ask President Obama about that, because he’d make speeches about it. I believe that the fact that I brought in, it will be soon, millions of jobs, you see where companies are moving back into our country. [Triumphal laundry list of job claims from Trump omitted.] I think that’s going to have a huge, positive impact on race relations. You know why? It is jobs. What people want now, they want jobs. They want great jobs with good pay. And when they have that, you watch how race relations will be.
So Trump thinks there are race problems in the US … because of jobs?
I mean, economic hard times will create social stress that will lead to folk scapegoating other groups. But the alt-Rightists in Charlottesville weren’t protesting because of jobs.
And I’ll tell you, we’re spending a lot of money on the inner cities – we are fixing the inner cities – we are doing far more than anybody has done with respect to the inner cities. It is a priority for me, and it’s very important.
Remember that “inner city” is a Trump code word for “racial minorities,” even though that’s demographic nonsense. But it also seems to be either an attempt by Trump to claim he’s not racist because of all he claim to be doing for inner cities, or that the racial problems in this country are because racial minorities in the inner cities are causing problems because of lack of jobs and attention.
It actually none of it make sense.
REPORTER: Mr. President, are you putting what you’re calling the alt-left and white supremacists on the same moral plane?
TRUMP: I am not putting anybody on a moral plane, what I’m saying is this: you had a group on one side and a group on the other, and they came at each other with clubs and it was vicious and horrible and it was a horrible thing to watch, but there is another side. There was a group on this side, you can call them the left. You’ve just called them the left, that came violently attacking the other group. So you can say what you want, but that’s the way it is.
So the answer is yes. In fact, the way Trump describes it, it was the “alt-Left” that “came violently attacking the other group.” So I think he just called them worse than the alt-Rightists there.
REPORTER: You said there was hatred and violence on both sides?
TRUMP: I do think there is blame – yes, I think there is blame on both sides. You look at, you look at both sides. I think there’s blame on both sides, and I have no doubt about it, and you don’t have any doubt about it either. And, and, and, and if you reported it accurately, you would say.
It’s all about the media, of course.
REPORTER: The neo-Nazis started this thing. They showed up in Charlottesville.
TRUMP: Excuse me, they didn’t put themselves down as neo-Nazis, and you had some very bad people in that group. But you also had people that were very fine people on both sides. You had people in that group – excuse me, excuse me. I saw the same pictures as you did. 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.
Of course, “very fine people.”
REPORTER: George Washington and Robert E. Lee are not the same.
TRUMP: Oh no, George Washington was 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. Are we going to take down, are we going to take down statues to George Washington? How about Thomas Jefferson? What do you think of Thomas Jefferson? You like him? Okay, good. Are we going to take down his statue? He was a major slave owner. Are we going to take down his statue? You know what? It’s fine, you’re changing history, you’re changing culture …
I’ve already discussed the “who’s next?” argument — and, for the record, I would object to taking down statues of George Washington or Thomas Jefferson on that basis.
(Ironically, the Charlottesville incident may be accelerating efforts around the country to take down Confederate statuary and memorials. Even the National Review thinks it should.)
More important are Trump’s comment that this constitutes “changing history … changing culture.” Which is exactly what a white nationalist would argue. Except that it’s bushwah, as it’s not changing anything. Nobody is planning to strike Washington from the history books. Nobody is talking about throwing out the Declaration of Independence because Jefferson owned slaves. It does mean that evaluation of both those gentlemen — and others from that era — becomes more sophisticated and considered, as well as leading us in our modern era to consider how our own actions might be thought of in generations to come.
… and you had people – and I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally –
So there’s that.
— but you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists, okay? And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly.
Pardon me, let me shed a tear for … um, which people involved in the protest who were just there to represent their love of 1920s bronze artwork?
Remember, this was the “Unite the Right” rally, not the “Save the Statue” rally. There’s a reason why the governor of the state raised concerns about the protests before they happened, and the city tried to move the protests.
Now, in the other group also, you had some fine people, …
Nice of him to say so .
… but you also had troublemakers and you see them come with the black outfits and with the helmets and with the baseball bats – you had a lot of bad people in the other group too.
A lot?
Again, without defending people who came looking for a fight (and, largely, got one), Trump really seems to want to make them the centerpiece of the counterprotests.
TRUMP: […] No, no. There were people in that rally, and I looked the night before. If you look, they were people protesting very quietly, the taking down the statue of Robert E. Lee. I’m sure in that group there were some bad ones. The following day, it looked like they had some rough, bad people, neo-Nazis, white nationalists, whatever you want to call ‘em. But you had a lot of people in that group that were there to innocently protest and very legally protest, because you know, I don’t know if you know, but they had a permit. The other group didn’t have a permit.
Again with the permits.
Ironically, Trump’s infrastructure bill (which he really wanted to talk about) was all about reducing permits needed for infrastructure construction.
By the way, the photos and descriptions of the crowd on Friday night don’t show a lot of “very quiet” protesters (carrying tiki torches and chanting white power slogans as they went).
So I only tell you this: there are two sides to a story. I thought what took place was a horrible moment for our country, a horrible moment. But there are two sides to the country.
Y’know, two sides. Two groups of very nice people. Two groups of bad people (though only one of them had a permit, remember). Yeah, that’s not moral equivalence.
Does anybody have a final – does anybody have a final question? You have an infrastructure question.
Remarkably, he got one before the subject returned to Charlottesville.
REPORTER: Mr. President, have you spoken to the family of the victim of the car attack?
TRUMP: No. I will be reaching out, I’ll be reaching out.
REPORTER: When will you be reaching out?
TRUMP: I thought that the statement put out, the mother’s statement I thought was a beautiful statement. I’ll tell you – it was something that I really appreciated. I thought it was terrific. And really under the kind of stress that she’s under and the heartache she’s under, I thought putting out that statement to me was really something I won’t forget. Thank you all very much. Thank you.
REPORTER: Do you plan to go to Charlottesville, Mr. President?
TRUMP: Did you know I own a house? It’s in Charlottesville, oh boy. It’s in Charlottesville, you’ll see.
REPORTER: Is that the winery or something?
TRUMP: It’s a, it’s a, it is the winery.
REPORTERS YELL INDISTINCTLY.
TRUMP: I mean, I know a lot about Charlottesville. Charlottesville is a great place that’s been very badly hurt over the last couple of days. I own – I own actually one of the largest wineries in the United States. It’s in Charlottesville.
Because it’s always, ultimately, about Donald Trump.
REPORTER: What do you think needs to overcome the racial divides?
TRUMP: Well, I really think jobs are going to have a big impact. If we continue to create jobs – over a million – substantially more than a million, and you see just the other day, the car companies come in with Foxconn, I think if we continue to create jobs at levels that I’m creating jobs …
Because, again, it’s all about Donald Trump.
… I think that’s going to have a tremendous impact – positive impact – on race relations.
REPORTER: And what you said today, how do you think that will impact?
TRUMP: Because the people are going to be working and making a lot of money, much more than they ever thought possible. That’s going to happen. And the other thing, very important, I believe wages will start going up. They haven’t gone up for a long time. I believe wages now, because the economy is doing so well, with respect to employment and unemployment, I believe wages will start to go up. I think that’ll have a tremendously positive impact on race relations. Thank you.
Because racial conflict is all about jobs. Excluding, of course, the involuntary jobs that Robert E. Lee fought for.
And that was that. In summary:
- Trump stood by and said nothing because he was gathering facts, and there are still facts that haven’t been gathered yet.
- He then failed to condemn in a timely fashion racists and fascists and skinheads and the Klan and the Neo-Nazis because there were some bad people on the other side, too (and those bad people didn’t have permits).
- If you commit acts of hatred and violence you should not be called out for it if you can point to people on the other side who did some bad things, too.
- Protesting against a statue being taken down is perfectly legit, even if the statue represents a guy who fought for an awful cause, was put up long after the fact, is being taken down by legitimate local authorities, and is actually only an excuse for a “Unite the Right” rally where you burn tiki torches and chant racist slogans. At least if you get a permit.*
- Donald Trump is improving the racial divide by creating jobs, including at his huge winery, so get the hell off his back and ask him about infrastructure, dammit!
I’m almost afraid of what he’s going to say next, for fear that David Duke will like the next statement even better than this one. Though certainly Trump’s got plenty of other “just plain folk” on his side in this.
A note to the President:
PRO TIP for last Saturday morning: “While the white nationalist protesters in Charlottesville today have a constitutional right to express their opinion, and a legal right to gather and march in protest, I find their bigotry, fascism, and belief in racial superiority and separatism to be personally abhorrent and un-American. I urge the people of Charlottesville and their elected representatives to stand strong in the face of their pressure. Unlawful violence, from any side, should be condemned just as strongly, and prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”
There, Donald — I fixed it for you.
Or if you don’t like that, then consider this: any time you leave doubt as to whether or not you are giving moral support to Nazis and the Klan and white nationalists … figure out how not to do it, rather than digging your hole deeper.
* And it is, in fact, legit and legal to do so, but it’s not morally defensible, nor does it cover up what’s really being said, nor should it render one immune from moral condemnation from the guy with the bully pulpit.