Campaign Action
Notoriously punchable white supremacist leader Richard Spencer is wrong about the vast majority of things. But he may be right about the statement Donald Trump made on Monday after the political costs of not denouncing white supremacists grew too great:
"His statement today was more kumbaya nonsense," said Spencer, who attended and was slated to speak at the white nationalist "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Saturday. "Only a dumb person would take those lines seriously."
That is a non-crazy assessment of the statement Trump was obviously pressured to give and had nothing to do with the writing of, except for his insistence that he start by talking about a different subject entirely. Whoever wrote that statement didn’t even bother to make it sound like Trump. And while some of his white supremacist base are angry that he named the KKK and neo-Nazis, others see plenty of ways to read the statement as favorable to them:
"He said EVERYONE INVOLVED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. that includes Antifa and BLM," one Reddit user posted on the site's pro-Trump subreddit.
"He left the door open and clearly said we are all equal under the law," added another.
His addition of "other hate groups" led some white nationalist supporters to believe he was intentionally implicating Black Lives Matter and anti-fascist activists.
Mission accomplished for Trump, then. He got at least some of the traditional media’s more credulous pundits off his back and they gave him credit for a “presidential” statement without alienating his entire white supremacist base.
Tuesday, Aug 15, 2017 · 10:00:20 PM +00:00 · Laura Clawson
Welp, Trump sure proved Spencer’s assessment of his Monday statement 100 percent correct with his Tuesday press conference. And Spencer knows it, too.