People came “charging” at the alt-Right and the were “very, very violent?” Really man?
Why don’t you? Go ahead. Do it.
In fairness, here’s Trump’s entire press conference from beginning to end so just so we can start with exactly what it was he really said.
Q: Why did you wait so long to make a statement?
Trump: I didn’t wait long. I wanted to make sure, unlike most politicians, that what I said was correct. The first statement was a fine statement. You don’t make statements that direct, unless you know the fact. I takes a little while to get the facts. You still don’t know the facts, and it’s a very, very important process to me. It’s a very important statement, so I don’t want to go quickly and make a statement for the sake of making a political statement. I want to know the facts.
If you go back to… I brought it. As I said on Saturday “We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence. It has no place in America” and then I went on from there. Now here’s the thing, excuse me, excuse me, take it nice and easy. Here’s the thing, when I make a statement I like to be correct. I want the facts, this event just happened. A lot of the even didn’t even happen yet, as we were speaking. This event just happened. Before I make a statement, I need to facts, so I don’t want to rush into a statement. So making the statement when I made it was excellent.
In fact, the young woman who I hear is a fantastic young woman, and I heard i on NBC, her mother wrote me and said through social media, I guess twitter, the nicest things and I very much appreciated that. I hear she is a fine, excellent and incredible young woman. But her mother on twitter thanked me for what I said.
And honestly if the press were not fake, and it was honest, the press would have said that what I said was very nice. Unlike you and unlike the media, before I make a statement I like to know the facts.
Q: The CEO of Walmart says you missed a critical opportunity to help bring the country together. Did you?
Trump: Not at all. I think the country, look, you take a look. I’ve created over a million jobs since I’m President. The country is booming, the stock market is setting records, we have the highest levels of employment, we have the highest enthusiasm. The CEO of Walmart, who I know and is a very nice guy, was making a political statement.
Q: Would you do it again?
Trump: I would, you know why? BecauseI want to make sure when I make a statement, I want to make sure the statement was correct, unlike a lot of reporters. There was no way to make a correct statement that early. I didn’t know David Duke was there I wanted to see the facts. And the facts as they started coming out were very well stated. In fact everybody said “his statement was beautiful, if he would have made it sooner that would have been good.” I couldn’t have made it soon because I didn’t know all of the facts. Frankly, people still don’t know all of the facts. It was important to me...
Excuse me, excuse me, It was very important to me to get the facts out and get them correctly. Because if I would have made a fast statement, and the first statement was made without knowing much other than what we were seeing. The second statement was made after, with knowledge.
There’s still things, excuse me, there’s still things that people don’t know. I wanted to make a statement with knowledge, I wanted to know the facts.
Q: Two questions: Was this terrorism and can you tell us how you’re feeling about your chief strategist?
Trump: The driver of the car is a disgrace to himself, his family and country. You can call it terrorism, you can call it murder. You can call it what ever you want, you can call it the fastest one to come up with a good verdict. And then you get into legal semantics. The driver of the car is a murderer, and what he did was a horrible, horrible inexcusable thing.
Q: Can you tell us what your feeling about your chief strategist Mr. Bannon? Can you tell us broadly, do you still have confidence in Mr. Bannon?
Trump: I never spoke to Mr. Bannon about it. Well we’ll see, I like Mr Bannon he’s a friend of mine. Mr Bannon came on very late, you know that. I went through 17 Senators, Governor and I won all the primaries. Mr Bannon came on very much later than that. uh, and I like him. He’s a good man, he’s not a racist I can tell you that. He’s a good person, he actually gets a very unfair press in that regard. He’s a good person and a lot of the press treats him frankly very unfairly.
Q: Senator McCain has called on you to defend your National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster against Alt-Right attacks and he called on you again to..
Trump: Senator McCain? You mean the one who voted against Obamacare? You mean, Senator McCain who voted against us getting good health care?
Q: Senator McCain said that the alt-Right is behind these attacks and linked that same group to the group that perpetrated the attack in Charlottesville.
Trump: I don’t know, I can’t tell you, I’m sure Senator McCain must know what he’s talking about. But when you say “the alt-Right” Define “alt-Right” to me, you define it. Go ahead. No define it for me. Define it.
Q: Senator McCain defined it as the same group….
Trump: Well, what about the Alt-Left? Excuse me, what about the Alt-Left, who came charging at, as you say, the Alt-Right? Do they have any semblance of guilt? Let me ask you about this, what about the fact they came charging with clubs in their hands, swinging clubs, do they have any problem? I think they do. As far as i’m concerned that was a horrible, horrible day…
Wait a minute, I’m not finished. I’m not finished fake news.
That was a horrible day...
Q (Jim Acosta): You’re putting it on the same level…
Trump: I will tell you something. I watched those very closely, much more closely than you people watched it, And you have, you had a group on one side that was bad, and you had a group on the other side that was very violent. And nobody wants to say that but I’m going to say it right now. You had a group on the other side who came charging in without a permit, and they were very violent.
Q: Do you what you call the “alt-Left” is the same as neo-Nazis?
Trump: All of those people, excuse me, I’ve condemned neo-Nazis. I’ve condemned many different groups, but not all of those people who were there were neo-Nazis, not all of those people were white supremacist by any stretch. Those people were there because they wanted to protest the taking down of a statue, Robert E. Lee. So, excuse me, you take a look at some of the group and you see, and you 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 it’s Stonewall Jackson coming down, I wonder is it George Washington the next week and is it Thomas Jeffereson? You have to ask yourself, “Where does it stop?”
They were there to protest, excuse me, you take a look at the night before, they were there to protest the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee.
Q: Should the statue of Robert E. Lee say up?
Trump: That’s up to a local, town, community, or the Federal government depending on where it is located.
Q: What do you think about race relations in America, and do you think this has gotten worse or better since you took office?
Trump: I think they’ve gotten better or the same. Look, things have been frayed for a long time. You can ask President Obama about that because he’d make speeches about it, but I believe that the fact that I brought in, it will be soon millions of jobs where companies are moving back into our country, I think that’s going to have a tremendous positive impact on race relations. We have companies coming back into our country, we have two car companies, we have Foxconn in Wisconsin, we have many companies I say pouring back in. I think that’s going to have a huge positive impact on race relations. You know why? It’s job. People want jobs, they want great jobs with great pay. And when they have that you watch how race relations will. And I’ll tell you were spending a lot of money on the inner cites, we’re doing far more than anybodies done with respect to the inner cities. It’s a priority for me.
Q: Are you putting what you’re calling the alt-Left and White supremacists on the same moral plane?
Trump: I’m not putting anybody on a moral plane. What I’m saying is this: You had a group on one side, and you had a 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. There is another side. On this side, you can call them the “Left” you just called them the “Left”, that came violently attacking the other group. You can say what you want, but that’s the way it is.
Q: You said there was hatred, there was violence on both sides?
Trump: Yes, I think there’s blame on both sides. You look at both sides, I think there’s blame on both sides. I don't have any doubt about it, and you don’t have any doubt about it. And.. and… if you reported it accurately, you would say.
Q (Jim Acosta): The neo-Nazis started this…protests that...
Trump: You had some very bad people in that group, but you also had some people who were very fine people — on both sides. You had people in that group, excuse me, excuse me, I saw the same pictures that you did. You had people in that group who were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name.
Q: Crosstalk
Trump: George Washington was a slave owner. Was George Washington a slave owner? So will George Washington now lose his status? Are we going to now take down, excuse me, are we going to take down statues to George Washington? How about Thomas Jefferson? What do you think of Thomas Jefferson?
Q (Acosta): I do love him.
Trump: Good. Are we going to take down the statue because he was a major slave owner? Now are we going to take down his statue? So you know what, it’s fine. You’re changing history, you're changing culture. And you had people, and I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and white nationalists, they should be condemned totally, but you had many people other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists ok? And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly. Now, in the other group also you had some fine people, but you also had trouble makers. And you see them come with the black outfits and with the helmets and with the baseball bats. You got a lot of bad people in the other group too.
Q: You’re saying the press has treated white nationalist unfairly?
Trump: No, there were people at that rally. Look, the night before. If you look, there were people protesting very quietly the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee. I’m sure in that group they had some bad ones. It looked like the following day they had some rough, bad, people. Neo-nazis, white nationalists, what ever you want to call them, you had a lot of people in that group who were there to innocently protest. And very legally protest, because I don’t know if you know, they had a permit. The other group didn’t have a permit.
So I only tell you this, there are two sides. I thought what took place was a horrible moment for our country. A horrible moment, but there are two sides to the country. Does any have a final, you have an infrastructure….
Q: What makes you think you can get an infrastructure bill, you didn’t get health care?
Trump: Well, you know. We came very close with health care, unfortunately John McCain decided to vote against it at the last minute. You’ll have to ask John McCain why he did that. But we came very close to health care, we will end up getting health care. But we’ll get infrastructure, and actually infrastructure is something that I think we’ll have bipartisan support on. I actually think Democrats will go along with the infrastructure.
Q: Have you spoken to the family of the victim of the car attack?
Trump: I’ll be reaching out. I’ll be reaching out.
Q: When will you be reaching out?
Trump: I was very.. I I thought that the statement put out, the mother’s statement I thought was a beautiful statement. It was something that I really appreciated. I thought it was terrific. Under the kind of stress that she’s under and the hear ache that she’s under. Thank you very much. Thank you.
Q: Will you go to Charlottesville, Mr. President?
Trump: I own a house in Charlottesville, did anybody know I own a house in Charlottesville. Oh boy. It is the winery. I know a lot about Charlottesville. Charlottesville is a place that has been very badly hurt over the last few days. I actually own one of the larger wineries in the United States, it’s in Charlottesville.
Q: What do you think needs to be done to overcome the racial divide?
Trump: I think if we continue to create jobs. Over a million, substantially over a million. And you see just he other day with the car companies coming in, you know Foxconn. I think if we continue to create jobs at levels that I’m creating job, I think that will have a tremendous impact, a positive impact on race relations.
Q: And what you said today, how do you think that will that impact the racial…?
Trump: Because people are going to be working, they’re going to be making much more money than they ever thought possible. It’s gonna happen...
Q: I mean your remarks today?
Trump: I believe wages are going to start going up, they haven’t gone up for a long time. I believe wages now are going to go up. The economy is doing so well with respect to employment and unemployment. I think wages will go up, I think that will have a tremendous positive impact on race relations. Thank you.
So just real quick, the number of jobs generated so far this year under Trump is less than the number of jobs generated by Obama last year and I don’t think that ended the “race relations problem” then, so this probably won't now.
What happened the night before the main protest is not what he claims as Vice News reporter Elle Reeve has noted once they started Marching they didn't talk about Robert E. Lee’s statue — they talked about Jews.
Additionally the people with “black outfits, helmets and baseball bats” weren’t the “alt-Left” — they were the neo-Nazis as we can see from the attack on Deandre Harris.
Here’s a bit more showing things from before the attack which attempt to claim Deandre had a “weapon” — which actually looks to me like a wireless microphone, not a “baseball bat.” He also had a mask, although he wasn’t really wearing it at the time.
The second video has a cut in it (at 1:01) which doesn’t show where Deandre is first knocked down possibly by a fellow counter-protestor wearing a pink shirt, but there is also a guy wearing a white helmet who goes down and stays down after being chased and tackled from behind by a black guy wearing a teal blue shirt, then he’s hit by a white guy in a navy polo shirt with khakis (which is the alt-Right uniform) just before Deandre is attacked as he’s trying to get back up.
Is this what Trump was talking about? Because if so we’re really only talking about 1 or 2 guys out of thousands who may have gone after one possible neo-Nazi and knocked him down, that’s it, but it’s not all clear if they’re neo-Nazi, or BLM or Antifa or that knocking down the helmet guy was even on purpose.
If Charlottesville police think anybody who might be connected with BLM or Antifa committed a crime or assault they certainly have my blessing to pursue charges, but so far they’ve only issued warrants for neo-Nazies. If Trump or the WH wants to point out the “bad dudes on the other side” from that video, I’m sure they can get Charlottesville PD on the phone.
At the very end of it you see the image abruptly interrupted and hear someone shout “stop fucking filming.”
But the thing is that neither of these examples fit what Trump describes. He sounds like he’s describing Antifa who have been known to violently counter-attack against white nationalist and neo-Nazis. Only they tend to where an outfit to distinguish themselves and usually look like this →
That’s not what we saw in Charlottesville.
Now, I’m not going to assume this is everything, that this is all that happened, obviously there was more.
I’m putting the challenge directly to Trump and his apologist like Mr. Falwell. Trump claimed he saw “the same video” that the media had. That means it’s not “inside” information it’s already out there. And if it’s out there just like I found these videos, it can be found.
Put up, or else, SHUT UP.
Thanks.