Why Can't Trump Just Condemn Nazis?
When violence erupted during a white-nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, one year ago this weekend, President Trump was slow to respond. When he did, his response was shockingly diffident, condemning the “egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence on many sides.”
The president was faster to comment on the anniversary of the march. Saturday morning, he tweeted:
Following last year’s violence, Trump infamously delivered a series of conflicting statements. Following the “many sides” statement, the president attempted a clean-up the following Monday at the White House, naming “the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.” The next day he reversed course again during a combative press conference, saying there were “very fine people on both sides” and attacking what he called the “alt-left.”
Trump’s tweet Saturday shows that his vision of what happened hasn’t gotten any clearer with the passage of a year. He’s still unable to name Nazis, white supremacists, and white nationalists for what they are, and unable to differentiate between those groups and those that oppose them.
The condemnation of “all types of racism” is, on its face, a positive, but it can also be read as a coded reference to the idea that there is a anti-white racist movement seeking “genocide” of white people. White supremacists will certainly read it that way.
The condemnation of “all … acts of violence,” apologizes for the instigators in Charlottesville under the guise of reasonability. There’s no debating that violence is bad. There’s also no question who was responsible for touching off the violence in Charlottesville: the group of white supremacists and Nazis who marched on the town, many carrying weapons, to shout racist slogans and defend statutes that commemorate a traitorous rebellion that sought to preserve the enslavement of black people. One person, Heather Heyer, died when one of the ralliers drove a car into a crowd. Others were beaten.
By declining to name the aggressors, Trump places the ralliers on an even footing with those who came out to oppose them. “I am not putting anybody on a moral plane,” the president said a year ago, but once again he has done just that.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/why-cant-trump-just-condemn-nazis/ar-BBLNsKt?li=BBnb7Kz
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