Rhetoric of Silence: What You Don't Say Matters – The Charlottesville Incident, Part 2

I posted a while back that President Trump's silence about the Minnesota mosque bombing meant something: this was an event that could not be ignored, and yet Mr. Trump ignored it.

Donald Trump, WH

Mr. Trump repeats himself – silently. The white supremacist demonstration and anti-white supremacist counter-demonstration in Charlottesville led to violence, and it was an event that could not be ignored. Mr. Trump did not exactly ignore it, but he certainly evaded it. He started with this non-controversial tweet: "We ALL must be united & condemn all that hate stands for. There is no place for this kind of violence in America. Lets come together as one!" He obviously didn't proofread, but no one is perfect. Then, talking to reporters, Mr. Trump appeared to blame both sides: "We condemn in strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence — on many sides." Republican Senator Lindsey Graham criticized the president, saying that he "missed an opportunity to be very explicit here. These groups seem to believe they have a friend in Donald Trump in the White House."

Lindsey Graham

Mr. Trump truly faces a difficult rhetorical problem. On the one hand, he received strong support from extreme right-wingers and white supremacists. If he offends them, what will happen to his support base? If, on the other hand, he expresses sympathy for them, he loses the great majority of decent Americans. Most of the Republicans who voted for Trump in the 2016 election were not white supremacists. The best solution apparently seemed to him to be to evade the issue. Unfortunately, this was an issue that he could evade. A media firestorm resulted.

The White House did issue an unsigned statement that "of course" President Trump opposed white supremacy. The public has, so far, not heard this from his own lips, much less from his famous Twitter account.

So, as usual, silence becomes a form of speech.

The larger question is this: have Mr. Trump's mainstream Republican supporters come to grips with Mr. Trump's relationship to the Alt-Right white supremacist or white nationalist movement? I suspect that they have not. Take a look at my earlier posts about Richard Spencer's "End of History" speech.

http://harpine.blogspot.com/2017/08/richard-spencers-end-of-history-speech.html

http://harpine.blogspot.com/2017/08/richard-spencers-end-of-history-speech_14.html


Interestingly, Mr. Trump's non-response to Charlottesville's events cost him the support of Merck CEO Kenneth Frazier.  It seems that silence only gets you so far, and, at some point, speakers need to take a stand.

Update: Two days later, Trump finally condemned white supremacy and the Charlottesville attackers. Late, but welcome.  Still, timing matters.