Trump Doubles Down On Charlottesville “Both Sides” Comment

Ken AshfordRace, Rightwing Extremism/Violence, Trump & AdministrationLeave a Comment

Joe Biden’s presidential launch has again cast a spotlight on President Trump’s comments about the 2017 tragedy in Charlottesville. And in doing so, it has unearthed a surprising amount of revisionist history from Trump’s supporters.

And now from Trump himself, too.

In his announcement video, Biden prominently featured scenes from the August 2017 “Unite the Right” rally that resulted in an avowed neo-Nazi killing a woman and injuring dozens of other by driving into a crowd of counterprotesters. Trump would soon condemn what happened “on many sides” and later argue there were “very fine people on both sides” of the scenes that weekend.

That led to an instant backlash, including by some in the White House, who felt Trump was downplaying the racism on display on that tragic day.

But some Trump supporters — and now Trump himself — have argued that he was taken out of context. They say he wasn’t referring to neo-Nazis, white supremacists and white nationalists when he referred to “very fine people” on both sides, but rather some other people who shared their cause of saving a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee.

“If you look at what I said, you will see that that question was answered perfectly,” Trump said Friday. “I was talking about people that went because they felt very strongly about the monument to Robert E. Lee — a great general, whether you like it or not.”

The argument makes little sense when you consider the facts on the ground, and it ignores Trump’s regular use of dog whistles.

Let’s recap what happened.

After the death of Heather Heyer, Trump on Aug. 12 condemned “in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence — on many sides.” He then repeated “on many sides,” apparently emphasizing that the counterprotesters (which included many who were peaceful and some whoweren’t) needed to be condemned, as well.

After an outcry, Trump on Aug. 13 offered a more forceful denunciation of the white supremacists, neo-Nazis and white nationalists who had rallied in Charlottesville. But then, on Aug. 15, he again returned to the “both sides” commentary, saying there was both “blame” and “very fine people” on each side that day.

Contained in that third set of comments is a quote that Trump supporters, including Trump surrogate Steve Cortes and Breitbart News, have argued is exculpatory, They note that Trump, at one point, explicitly excluded neo-Nazis and white nationalists from his “very fine people” formulation.

Here’s a brief transcript (key parts bolded):

REPORTER: You said there was hatred and violence on both sides —

TRUMP: Well, I do think there’s blame, yes, I think there’s blame on both sides. 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 if you reported it accurately, you would say it.

[CROSSTALK]

TRUMP: Excuse me. 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.

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 statues of George Washington? How ’bout Thomas Jefferson? What do you think of Thomas Jefferson? You like him? Ok, good. Are we going to take down the statue because he was a major slave-owner? Now we’re going to take down his statue. So you know what, it’s fine. You’re changing history, you’re changing culture. And you had people, and I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis or the white nationalists because they should be condemned totally. But you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists, ok? And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly.

As you can see, Trump does say those groups should be “condemned totally.” This is the basis for what some call the “Charlottesville hoax.”

But it leads to the question: Which “very fine people” was he talking about? The “Unite the Right” rally was partly organized by a well-known white nationalist, Richard Spencer, and included both neo-Nazis and white supremacist groups. Former Ku Klux Klan head David Duke was a scheduled speaker. The cause they were protesting — the removal of Lee’s statue — is one supported by many nonwhite supremacists and nonwhite nationalists, but this rally was clearly not one for your average supporter of Confederate monuments.

And indeed, if you look at what Trump says next, it seems that he totally misconstrues who was actually protesting in Charlottesville. Here’s the next part:

REPORTER: You said the press has treated white nationalists unfairly?

TRUMP: 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 of 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 them. But you had a lot of people in that group that were there to innocently protest and very legally protest. Because I don’t know if you know, they had a permit. The other group didn’t have a permit. 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.

There was indeed another protest the night before the deadly rally, but it could hardly be described as “very quiet” or “fine people.” Here’s how The Post described the scene:

At their Friday night rally at the University of Virginia, the white nationalists brandished torches and chanted anti-Semitic and Nazi slogans, including “blood and soil” (an English rendering of the Nazi “blut und boden”) and “Jews will not replace us” — all crafted to cast Jews as foreign interlopers who need to be expunged. The attendees proudly displayed giant swastikas and wore shirts emblazoned with quotes from Adolf Hitler. One banner read, “Jews are Satan’s children.”

Vice News has footage of these Friday-night protesters chanting “Jews will not replace us” and “blood and soil”:

For the Trump defense to make any sense, there would have had to be some other group of people who didn’t subscribe to these awful ideals but for some reason decided to march in common cause with neo-Nazis, white supremacists and white nationalists. It’s theoretically possible there might have been some such people there, but you would think they’d quickly become pretty uncomfortable marching next to people chanting “Jews will not replace us” — and people who appeared prepared for violence, even donning helmets.

Is it possible that some people came to the rally in defense of the Robert E Lee statue, who don’t subscribe to white supremacy ideology? Theoretically. But I haven’t seen a picture or interview with one of them, and I’m sure that if some of those people did come to the rally for that reason, they would have distanced themselves from the tiki torch marching neo-Nazis. In other words, they didn’t rally at all, as Trump claims.

“Very fine” people don’t attend demonstrations organized and led by white supremacists.   

This sums up the absurdity of the right’s gaslighting nicely. Even if there were some non neo-Nazi people in the pro-confederate statue crowd on Saturday, the majority of people attending were drawn there by Richard Spencer and other avowed racists and white nationalists. 

This was their Pow Wow, and just because a few dog-whistle racist-lite types might have been there, doesn’t in any way diminish the overall thrust of the event and its goals in the culture war.