Yesterday, President Donald Trump held a press conference to talk about infrastructure. He seemed surprised that the press instead asked questions about the August 13, 2017 violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. What did he expect? He belligerently responded that the questions were coming from "fake news," as if the events in Charlottesville did not really happen.
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| Trump 8/15/17 News Conference, WH |
Here is my personal bias: my father and father-in-law both served in the military during World War II, and my uncle, Pfc. Peter Feduska, died at the age of 19 during the Battle of the Bulge. I do not think highly of Nazis. With respect to unreformed Confederates, I did grow up in Virginia, and, many, many years ago, two Harpines served in the Confederate Army. I know that they fought on the wrong side.
Neo-Nazi protesters in Charlottesville chanted Nazi slogans like "blood and soil." A Neo-Nazi supporter made the Nazi salute while wearing a hat with the emblem of the 82nd Airborne Division, the unit that air-dropped into Normandy to end Nazi tyranny. Members of the Ku Klux Klan marched openly, carrying the Confederate flag.
Right after the demonstration and subsequent violence, President Trump had issued a statement that blamed "both sides." Although there indeed was some violence on both sides, his statement tried to establish a degree of moral equivalence: he compared Nazis and white supremacists with the people who protested them. Yielding to public pressure, he subsequently read a prepared statement denouncing the white nationalists.
At yesterday's press conference, Mr. Trump reverted to moral equivalence. He did, indeed, criticize the White nationalists and Nazis, but defended other members of the same group in a statement that tried to have things both ways:
"The following day, it looked like they had some rough, bad people - neo-Nazis, white nationalists, whatever you want to call them.
"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, they had a permit. The other group didn't have a permit."
He reiterated that "I think there's blame on both sides." He said that the marchers included "some very bad people," but also "people that were very fine people on both sides." Seemingly unhappy at the removal of Charlottesville's statue of Robert E. Lee, Trump pointed out that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson also owned slaves. Was the the country on a slippery slope to take down their statues, he wanted to know. He then evaded a question as to when he would reach out to the Charlottesville victim's mother.
Rhetoric always depends on cultural and historical context. The Nazis, the KKK, and other right-wing extremists have a long, ugly history, and they have never lacked supporters. When speakers talk about them, they must remember the history.
Yes, Trump did condemn the white supremacists and the Nazis, and no, the press did not adequately recognize his condemnation. Yes, some of the counter-protesters became violent, and it was right to criticize them. At the same time, Trump tried to establish moral equivalence between the racist extremists and those who protested them. This, many members of the public and of the press refused to accept. Trump even lost a Fox News analyst. Although Trump has never clearly endorsed white supremacy during his campaign, white supremacists consistently supported him. That is why he has been walking on a rhetorical tightrope and, during yesterday's press conference, he fell off. When you start talking about Nazis in the United States of America, the country that defeated Nazis in the 1940s at great cost in lives and treasure, there can be no middle ground. Mr. Trump tried to find the middle ground anyway, and it wasn't there.
Update: Mr. Trump was in error. The counter-protesters did have a permit.
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