The so-called “Unite The Right 2” rally held on Sunday in Washington, D.C., offered the Man Who Lost The Popular Vote an opportunity to, in some small way, counter the stain on the historical record he put there last year with his infamous statement that there were “very fine people, on both sides” of a protest in which one side was populated by neo-Nazis and white supremacists. Did Trump take that opportunity? Anyone who thought he would, or even thought he might, really hasn’t been paying attention.
Let’s break this down. “The riots in Charlottesville a year ago”—no mention of the white supremacists who organized that rally. “Senseless death”—no mention of the circumstances of that death, namely the murder of anti-racist protestor Heather Heyer by one of those neo-Nazi white supremacists. “All types of racism”—no mention of the white supremacists who organized this year’s rally, which is especially galling given that they were the only racists involved in the rally either last year or this year.
A real president, someone actually interested in helping this country defeat hate and become a more just, inclusive, and unified people—someone like, say, Barack Obama—would have approached such an opportunity very differently. Now, to say Trump should’ve done what Obama would’ve is to hold him to a standard he could never meet, intellectually or morally. That much is obvious. But if Trump had had any interest in doing anything positive, his response could have simply been something like this:
White supremacists are holding a rally tomorrow. I condemn white supremacy, and anyone who marches under its banner. I reject their support, and I don’t even want their votes.
That would have been the minimum statement necessary to make the point. Such a statement would not have erased the ugly, hateful impact of last year’s “both sides” disgrace—which, don’t forget, he doubled down on a couple of days later. But it would have at least showed he gave a damn. Instead, what the above tweet shows is that Trump just can’t quit people like avowed white supremacists David Duke and Richard Spencer. It shows that Donald Trump, one year after Charlottesville, continues to trade in the currency of white identity politics.
Ian Reifowitz is the author of Obama’s America: A Transformative Vision of Our National Identity (Potomac Books).
Here’s video of me on France24 being interviewed about this topic on Sunday afternoon.