Where has the week gone, Donald? I mean, just a week ago, the city of Charlottesville was prepping itself for a big white nationalist rally, “Unite the Right.” Who knew what would come next?
Well, surely things have settled back down again after all that. Let’s go to that Twitter stream, Donald …
[Being a look at the @RealDonaldTrump Twitter account, with a glance at the @POTUS account, grouped for your topical pleasure.]
Charlottesville (still)
Hey, Donald … you may not have seen that long piece I wrote yesterday about the First Rule of Holes (When You Find Yourself In One, Stop Digging) [16]. In fact, you probably didn’t, which would explain a few things about your continuing thrashing about on this topic.
Memorial service today for beautiful and incredible Heather Heyer, a truly special young woman. She will be long remembered by all!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 16, 2017
That’s a very nice sentiment, Donald. But … what made her “incredible” and “truly special”? What do you think she will be “long remembered” for? What was her cause? Why was she there?
I mean, I realize you’re trying to throw some folks a bone here, but just saying she was “beautiful” and “special” without expanding on it is like … well, saying that “hatred is bad” but not calling out the folk you are seeing hatred from: it just doesn’t get the message across.
Rather than putting pressure on the businesspeople of the Manufacturing Council & Strategy & Policy Forum, I am ending both. Thank you all!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 16, 2017
Okay, Donald, this was perhaps the most amusing event all week, as a substantial number of CEOs quit — or seriously considered — some elite advisory panels of yours, in response to your tepid condemnation of white supremacist groups in Charlottesville. And, probably, due to your public lashing out at the first one to do so, the CEO of Merck.
You lost nine of your 28-member Manufacturing Council, and the Strategy & Policy Forum was also looking rocky. This despite your assurances to everyone on Tuesday that there were plenty more leaders clamoring to get onto these advisory forums, and that people who quit were just grandstanding, and these groups were necessary for “JOBS!”
And then you …
… basically fired them all before more of them could quit.
Leadership!
Really, it was the most entertaining drollery coming out of the White House in a week. If only it hadn’t been prompted by such an awful event.
Publicity seeking Lindsey Graham falsely stated that I said there is moral equivalency between the KKK, neo-Nazis & white supremacists……
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 17, 2017
Oh, Donald — you’re so charming when you’re attacking people who have been mean to you. Your angry “No, you’re a poo-poo face!” rants will truly be legendary in presidential history.
I’m no Graham fan, but I have been interested in watching how he’s taken on the role of GOP Gadfly (one of several) in the US Senate toward your particular brand of governance.
In regards to your accusation … well, yeah, you pretty much did create a moral equivalency between the racist and fascist crowds protesting in Charlottesville and the counter-protesters against them. Indeed, you noted in your press conference multiple times that the counter-protesters didn’t even have a permit! Gads!
Oh, I’m sure you included Mr Heyer in the “very good people” on “that side”. But do you have any idea what she was doing there, what her opinions were, what actions she’d taken Friday and Saturday? And by branding her “side” as a whole as containing just as many “bad people” as the white supremacist protesters and of engaging in the same kind of violence and hatred and bigotry as their “bad people” did … well, yeah, you did tar Ms Heyer with the same brush. I don’t know that you necessarily meant to, but your inability to see that (and attacks when someone points it out) is telling, Donald.
The public is learning (even more so) how dishonest the Fake News is. They totally misrepresent what I say about hate, bigotry etc. Shame!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 17, 2017
Every word, Donald. The media and the public have been hanging on every word. And reporting it. And discussing it. If they are somehow completely misunderstanding what is going on, it’s because you are not communicating clearly and coherently.
Of course, you have some of the public supporting you. Unfortunately, they seem to be wildly misinformed as to what actually went down in Charlottesville.
It’s not yet too late, Donald. If you announced you were making a speech on TV tonight, every single network and news channel would cover it live. You could unequivocally condemn neo-fascism and white nationalism. You could clarify that unprovoked violence was not legally or (as Martin Luther King would note) ethically permissible, even against people shouting hateful things, but you could leave no doubt in the American mind that you morally disapprove of and distance yourself from white supremacy, from the KKK and neo-Nazis. Do it without muddying the waters with critiques of “Antifa” or BLM or “the other side.” Just make it clear you hate Nazis. That’s the message here.
Just make it clear that, all other factors aside, you hate Nazis.
Do that, and you could recover this still, if you are anything like the great communicator, the ultimate salesman, you claim to be.
Or, y’know, you could instead double down on how lovely those Confederate statues are …
Sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments. You…..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 17, 2017
…can't change history, but you can learn from it. Robert E Lee, Stonewall Jackson – who's next, Washington, Jefferson? So foolish! Also…
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 17, 2017
…the beauty that is being taken out of our cities, towns and parks will be greatly missed and never able to be comparably replaced!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 17, 2017
This? This is your take-away from all of the blood and pain and anger? This is what you pivot to, Donald?
Have you ever been an historical preservationist, Donald? Of course not. You’re a real estate developer — you’d tear down a monument or rename a park in a hot minute if it got in the way of a new hotel or country club you were putting up.
Why do you call them “our” statues and monuments, Donald? Are you talking on behalf of the American people? Or some smaller group?
If the public, and their local, public, elected officials, decide (as you said they could, Donald), that a given statue no longer represents what they, as a community, believe in — why is that something that makes you sad?
Does the provenance of these statues — most of them erected not right after the Civil War, but in the first third of the Twentieth Century, in response to the political sentiments of white supremacists and history revisionists and segregationists — factor into your feelings here?
How does this destroy history, Donald, or culture? What is the culture being “ripped apart” here? What is the history somehow being forgotten?
What are the lessons to be “learned” of a statue of Robert E. Lee, or a Stonewall Jackson?
What values and culture does a Stonewall Jackson monument bring vs. a Thomas Jefferson one?
Do you see no discernible difference between George Washington and Robert E. Lee?
Why should we be preserving statues and monuments to military and political leaders of a rebellion against the United States, fought in the name of preserving chattel slavery? Why should monuments that laud that effort, that speak of the Lost Cause, be seen as essential to our culture?
Maybe, if these are such essential elements of our history and culture, Donald, you should personally offer to take them off the hands of these communities. You could install them at Bedminster, maybe, a statue at each tee. Or maybe at Mar-a-Lago, since Florida was part of the Confederacy. They’re huge and overwrought and gaudy, which means they’d blend in perfectly.
Give that some thought, Donald.
Oh, and one more thing: the Charlottesville rally was not about the statue and the park. Not really. It was to “Unite the Right,” to pull together the racist and fascist elements of the the “Alt-Right” to one place to demonstrate their power.
Which is why the “history” and “culture” elements here are so problematic, Donald. Because Jason Kessler, the initial organizer of the gathering, said 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.” And Richard Spencer, an alt-Right figure who brought in additional groups, 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.”
Is that the history and culture you are sad to see being ripped up, Donald?
Enemies
I suppose your diatribe about Lindsay Graham above would count here, but he wasn’t the only target of your ire in the last 24 hours.
Great to see that Dr. Kelli Ward is running against Flake Jeff Flake, who is WEAK on borders, crime and a non-factor in Senate. He's toxic!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 17, 2017
Because, of course, GOP Senator Flake dared to write a book criticizing you and your leadership and what you’re doing to this country. So, of course, you have to take not just political vengeance by supporting his primary opponent, but call him names.
Because leadership!
Friends
Wow, Senator Luther Strange picked up a lot of additional support since my endorsement. Now in September runoff. Strong on Wall & Crime!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 16, 2017
That’s a very interesting, or even contra-factual, interpretation of the polling data, Donald. Back in July, Moore’s polling was in the high 20s, low 30s. He ended up getting 39% of the vote. Strange’s polling was in the mid-30s; he ended up with 33%.
Mind you, I’d still rather see Strange win than the theocratic zany Moore. But it’s not clear to me that, even with your very high polling in Alabama (because, Alabama), you’re having that much effect on this race.
You retweeted the head of an investment firm and “Trumpenomics Expert”:
https://twitter.com/JacobAWohl/status/897871439272960000
There’s nothing new there, of course — you were crowing about those numbers earlier this week and last week. It’s just noteworthy that you _keep doing it,_ as well as dragging in other people’s endorsements about it.
THANK YOU @MayorGimenez for following the RULE OF LAW! Sanctuary cities make our country LESS SAFE! Full remarks: https://t.co/Kz2EsQ3f1v pic.twitter.com/vD3BB3hyti
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 17, 2017
[Also retweeted on @POTUS]
Interestingly enough, Sanctuary City leaders argue the opposite, that it increases public safety when the public don’t see the local police and other public safety workers as enforcers of federal immigration laws. When that happens, some people become less likely to report crimes, seek assistance, or cooperate in investigations of more serious crimes. That, in turn, affects not just immigrant populations, but everyone in the city.
As well, the implication that Sanctuary Cities somehow shelter crime lords and drug gangs is silly. Laws against such crimes are enforced. But Denver’ policy, to take an example, simply does things like prevent the city from detaining individuals beyond their sentence without a judicial warrant (vs ICE’s preference of letting cities hold onto possible deportees, at the city’s cost, until they come to pick them up), and declining to collect information about immigration or citizenship status of people they interact with (except as actually required by state or federal law).
No actual laws are being broken here, Donald — federal law on immigration still applies (but must be enforced by federal law enforcement), and judicial warrants for detention or interviews are being respected. It’s just that, for very good reasons, the city is not actively partnering, beyond the requirements of the actual law, with federal immigration officials to identify potential deportees, because of all the risks that doing so entails.
Potpourri
Join me at 7:00 P.M. on Tuesday, August 22nd in Phoenix, Arizona at the Phoenix Convention Center! Tickets at: https://t.co/2kUQfKqbsx pic.twitter.com/5ua74dlVtq
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 17, 2017
Why does the President of the United States need to hold a rally? Not an address to the nation, not an appearance at some newsworthy event or locale. Just a big organized love-fest of people cheering and screaming and chanting for the President of the United States.
I don’t know about you, Donald, but that still strikes me as bizarre.
Other
You or your Social Media Minion also tweeted about …
… landing back in Bedminister, NJ. [P]
… signing (in Bedminister) a veterans education act. [P]
… many meetings in Bedminster today.
… retweeting the VP about meeting with the President of Chile, and how the President wants “free and fair” trade.
(All of the above were retweeted on @POTUS)
On Trump’s past efforts to preserve valuable art and cultural heritage: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/07/trump-files-when-donald-destroyed-priceless-art-build-trump-tower/