The White House scrambled elaborate on President Donald Trump’s response to deadly, race-fuelled clashes in Charlottesville, Virginia, as he came under bipartisan scolding for not clearly condemning white supremacists and other hate groups immediately after the altercations.
As the chorus of criticism grew, White Houses aides were dispatched to the morning news shows, yet they struggled at times to explain the president’s position. A new White House statement on Sunday explicitly denounced the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazi groups.
Trump himself remained out of sight and silent, save for a retweet about two Virginia state policemen killed in a helicopter crash while monitoring the Charlottesville protests.
In the hours after a car ploughed into a group of anti-racist counter-protesters on August 13 (NZT), Trump addressed the violence in broad strokes, saying that he condemns “in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides.”
Speaking slowly from his New Jersey golf club while on a 17-day working vacation, Trump added: “It’s been going on for a long time in our country. Not Donald Trump. Not Barack Obama. It’s been going on for a long, long time.”
The White House statement went further. “The President said very strongly in his statement yesterday that he condemns all forms of violence, bigotry and hatred and of course that includes white Supremacists, KKK, neo-Nazi and all extremist groups.”
It added: “He called for national unity and bringing all Americans together.”
“It meets the definition of terrorism … but what you see here, is you see someone who is a criminal.”
HM McMaster
The White House did not attach a name to the statement. Usually, a statement would be signed by the press secretary or another staffer; not putting a name to one eliminates an individual’s responsibility for its truthfulness and often undercuts its significance.
Trump’s national security adviser, HR McMaster, said he considered the attack to be terrorism. The day before, Trump had not responded to reporters’ shouted questions about terrorism.
“I certainly think anytime that you commit an attack against people to incite fear, it is terrorism,” McMaster told ABC’s This Week.
‘It meets the definition of terrorism. But what this is, what you see here, is you see someone who is a criminal, who is committing a criminal act against fellow Americans.”
The president’s homeland security adviser, Tom Bossert, defended the president’s initial statement by suggesting that some of the counter-protesters were violent, too. When pressed during a contentious interview on CNN’s State of the Union, he specifically condemned the racist groups.
The president’s daughter and White House aide, Ivanka Trump, tweeted Sunday morning: “There should be no place in society for racism, white supremacy and neo-Nazis.”
Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, said he spoke to Trump in the hours after the clashes and that he twice told the president “we have to stop this hateful speech, this rhetoric.” He said he urged Trump “to come out stronger” against the actions of white supremacists.
“Trump comments were good. He didn’t attack us. He just said the nation should come together. Nothing specific against us. … No condemnation at all.”
Daily Stormer
White nationalists had assembled in Charlottesville to vent their frustration against the city’s plans to take down a statue of Confederal General. Robert E. Lee. Counter-protesters massed in opposition.
Alt-right leader Richard Spencer and former Ku Klux Klan member David Duke attended the demonstrations. Duke told reporters that the white nationalists were working to “fulfill the promises of Donald Trump.”
Trump’s initial comments drew praise from the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer, which wrote: “Trump comments were good. He didn’t attack us. He just said the nation should come together. Nothing specific against us. … No condemnation at all.”
The website had been promoting the Charlottesville demonstration as part of its “Summer of Hate” edition.
Charlottesville Mayor Michael Singer, a Democrat, slammed Trump’s stance toward hate groups, saying on NBC’s Meet the Press that he hopes Trump “looks himself in the mirror and thinks very deeply about who he consorted with.”
“Old saying: when you dance with the devil, the devil doesn’t change, the devil changes you,” Signer said.
Trump, as a presidential candidate, frequently came under scrutiny for being slow to offer his condemnation of white supremacists. His strongest denunciation of the movement has not come voluntarily, only when asked, and he occasionally trafficked in retweets of racist social media posts during his campaign.
His chief strategist, Steve Bannon, once declared that his former news site, Breitbart, was “the platform for the alt-right.”
