{"id":40907,"date":"2017-08-16T08:03:19","date_gmt":"2017-08-16T08:03:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/?p=40907"},"modified":"2017-08-16T08:03:19","modified_gmt":"2017-08-16T08:03:19","slug":"trump-gives-white-supremacists-unequivocal-boost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/politics\/trump-gives-white-supremacists-unequivocal-boost.html","title":{"rendered":"Trump Gives White Supremacists an Unequivocal Boost"},"content":{"rendered":"

Trump Gives White Supremacists an Unequivocal Boost<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

Trump Gives White Supremacists an Unequivocal Boost:- President Trump buoyed the white nationalist movement on Tuesday as no president has done in generations \u2014 equating activists protesting racism with the neo-Nazis and white supremacists who rampaged in Charlottesville, Va., over the weekend.<\/span><\/p>\n

Never has he gone as far in defending their actions as he did during a wild, street-corner shouting match of a news conference in the gilded lobby of Trump Tower, angrily asserting that so-called alt-left activists were just as responsible for the bloody confrontation as marchers brandishing swastikas, Confederate battle flags, anti-Semitic banners and \u201cTrump\/Pence\u201d signs.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThank you President Trump for your honesty & courage to tell the truth,\u201d David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan leader, wrote in a Twitter post shortly after Mr. Trump spoke.<\/span><\/p>\n

Richard B. Spencer, a white nationalist leader who participated in the weekend\u2019s demonstrations and vowed to flood Charlottesville with similar protests in the coming weeks, was equally encouraged. \u201cTrump\u2019s statement was fair and down to earth,\u201d Mr. Spencer tweeted.<\/span><\/p>\n

Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Virginia, a Democrat, wasted little time in accusing the president of adding to the divisions that put an unwanted spotlight on the normally peaceful college town.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNeo-Nazis, Klansmen and white supremacists came to Charlottesville heavily armed, spewing hatred and looking for a fight,\u201d Mr. McAuliffe said. \u201cOne of them murdered a young woman in an act of domestic terrorism, and two of our finest officers were killed in a tragic accident while serving to protect this community. This was not \u2018both sides.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

No word in the Trump lexicon is as tread-worn as \u201cunprecedented.\u201d But members of the president\u2019s staff, stunned and disheartened, said they never expected to hear such a voluble articulation of opinions that the president had long expressed in private. The National Economic Council chairman, Gary D. Cohn, and the Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, who are Jewish, stood by uncomfortably as the president exacerbated a controversy that has once again engulfed a White House in disarray.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve condemned neo-Nazis,\u201d Mr. Trump told reporters, who interrupted him repeatedly when he seemed to equate the actions of protesters on each side.<\/span><\/p>\n

He spoke of \u201cvery fine people on both sides.\u201d And of the demonstrators who rallied on Friday night, some chanting racist and anti-Semitic slogans, he said, \u201cYou had a lot of people in that group that were there to innocently protest and very legally protest.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Since the 1960s, Republican politicians have made muscular appeals to white voters, especially those in the South, on broad cultural grounds. But as a rule, they have taken a hard line on the party\u2019s racist, nativist and anti-Semitic fringe. Presidents Ronald Reagan, George Bush and George W. Bush roundly condemned white supremacists.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 1991, President George Bush took on Mr. Duke, who was then seeking the governor\u2019s seat in Louisiana, saying, \u201cWhen someone has so recently endorsed Nazism, it is inconceivable that someone can reasonably aspire to a leadership role in a free society.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

But Mr. Trump, who has repeatedly said he is not prejudiced, has been equivocal in his public or private statements against white nationalists and other racist organizations.<\/span><\/p>\n

On Saturday, in his first comments on Charlottesville, Mr. Trump blamed the violence on protesters from \u201cmany sides.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

After a storm of criticism over his remarks, Mr. Trump\u2019s aides persuaded him to moderate his message by assigning explicit blame for the violence on far-right agitators, which led to a stronger denunciation of hate groups \u2014 emailed to reporters and attributed to an unnamed \u201cspokesperson.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

When that failed to quell the controversy, aides, including Mr. Trump\u2019s new chief of staff, John F. Kelly, pressed him to make another public statement. Mr. Trump\u2019s daughter Ivanka and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, urged him to take a more moderate stance, according to two people familiar with the situation. But as with so many other critical moments in Mr. Trump\u2019s presidency, the two were on vacation, this time in Vermont.<\/span><\/p>\n

Grudgingly, Mr. Trump agreed.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cRacism is evil,\u201d the president said on Monday, delivering a statement from the White House that was written with aides during airplane and helicopter flights.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThose who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the K.K.K., white supremacists and other hate groups,\u201d he added \u2014 in response to bipartisan condemnation of his more equivocal statements during the first 48 hours of the crisis.<\/span><\/p>\n

But his unifying tone, which his staff characterized as more traditionally presidential, quickly gave way to a more familiar Trump approach. No sooner had he delivered the Monday statement than he began railing privately to his staff about the news media. He fumed to aides about how unfairly he was being treated, and expressed sympathy with nonviolent protesters who he said were defending their \u201cheritage,\u201d according to a West Wing official.<\/span><\/p>\n

He felt he had already given too much ground to his opponents, the official said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Trump prides himself on an unapologetic style he learned from his father, Fred Trump, a New York City housing developer, and Roy Cohn, a combative lawyer who served as an aide to Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s. During the 2016 presidential campaign, Mr. Trump attracted a significant following of white supremacists, expressed sympathy with white southerners fighting to preserve monuments for Confederate icons and was slow to distance himself from racists like Mr. Duke.<\/span><\/p>\n

The president\u2019s fury grew Monday as members of a White House business council began to resign to protest his reaction to Charlottesville. As usual, Mr. Trump found his voice by tweeting angrily about the news media.<\/span><\/p>\n

By Tuesday afternoon, Mr. Trump\u2019s staff sensed the culmination of a familiar cycle: The president was about to revert to his initial, more defiant stance. As Mr. Trump approached the microphone in the lobby of Trump Tower on Tuesday, aides winced at the prospect of an unmediated president. With good reason.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAlt-left\u201d groups were also \u201cvery, very violent,\u201d Mr. Trump said early in his exchange with reporters.<\/span><\/p>\n

He went on to assign \u201cblame on both sides\u201d \u2014 echoing his comments on Saturday, and reigniting a fight that has sunk staff morale after a brief bump in enthusiasm that followed the hiring of Mr. Kelly, who was to impose discipline on a chaotic West Wing.<\/span><\/p>\n

Eric Cantor, a former Republican congressman from Virginia who was a member of Republican leadership, was horrified by what took place in Charlottesville, and said the president needed to have spoken out earlier.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt really did demand a statement at the very beginning,\u201d said Mr. Cantor, who is Jewish. He added that efforts by the president to equate the actions of the counterprotesters, however violent they may have been, with the neo-Nazis and the driver of the car that murdered a protester were \u201cunacceptable.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Source:-\u00a0https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/08\/15\/us\/politics\/trump-charlottesville-white-nationalists.html<\/span><\/p>\n

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