It looked like Donald Trump was, at long last, starting to figure out how to be presidential on Monday. He finally got around to calling out the white supremacists who descended on Charlottesville, Virginia for last weekend’s violent events–including the death of Heather Heyer and the injury of 19 others when a racist plowed his car into a crowd of counter-protesters.

Well, that hope lasted less than 24 hours. On Tuesday afternoon, Trump not only backpedaled to his initial stance that “both sides” were responsible for the events in Charlottesville, but actually seemed to come to the defense of the neo-Nazi thugs.

Trump was on hand for a press conference at Trump Tower when reporters bombarded him with questions about his initial response to the Charlottesville events. Watch here.

Trump claimed that he wanted to find out “the facts” before he spoke about Charlottesville, and do so “correctly.” Well, apparently those facts now include that many of the protesters were just there to stop a slippery slope that could have potentially started if the statue of Robert E. Lee came down.

“You take a look at some of the groups and you see–and you’d know it if you were honest reporters, which in many cases, you’re not–but many of those people were there to protest the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee. So this week, it’s Robert E. Lee. I notice that Stonewall Jackson’s coming down. I wonder–is it George Washington next week, and is it Thomas Jefferson the week after? You know, you really do have to ask yourself, where does it stop?”

Let’s say it as a group, Donald. Washington and Jefferson fought a war to build this country. Lee and Jackson fought to tear it apart.


While Trump slammed James Fields, the guy who drove the car through the crowd, as a “disgrace” and a “murderer,” he also attacked the “alt-left” for “charging with clubs in their hands.”

If there was any doubt that Trump had gone back into false equivalency mode, he quickly erased it later in the presser.

“I’m not putting anybody on a moral plane. What I’m saying is this–you had a group on one side and group on the other, and they came at each other with clubs. And it was vicious, and it was horrible, and it was a horrible thing to watch. But there is another side. There was a group on this side, you can call them the left, you just called them the left that came violently attacking the other group. So you can say what you want, but that’s the way it is.”

He then emphatically declared that there was “blame on both sides,” and he had “no doubt” about it. This just minutes after he slammed a guy on the white supremacist side as a “disgrace” and a “murderer” for driving his car into a crowd.

Not surprisingly, the condemnation came fast, hard, and from both sides of the aisle.

But if there was any doubt that Trump had stepped in it, it was erased when David Duke essentially stood up and applauded.

https://twitter.com/bakedalaska/status/897561783233159169

Richard Spencer joined in as well.

When two full-throated racists are applauding you while virtually the entire sane political spectrum is slamming you up and down, it’s a sign you’ve committed an epic fail.


So there you have it. Trump once again thinks that “both sides” are to blame when a member of one side got the bright idea to plow his car into a crowd, and when that same side openly espouses hate and bigotry. Where have we gone when the president of the United States even thinks there’s another side in this situation? In a sane world, August 15, 2017 would go down as the moment that the Donald Trump presidency officially ended.

(featured image courtesy Michael Vadon, available via a Creative Commons BY-SA license)

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