Around dinnertime on August 14, President Donald Trump tweeted about the “truly bad people” who played a role in the Charlottesville race riots. Less than 24 hours later he highlighted some “very fine people” who were there, too.
The “bad people?” Perhaps not surprisingly, Trump was referring to members of the news media, whom he’s previously labeled the “enemy of the American people.” And the “very fine people?” They were in Charlottesville simply to protest the removal of a statue, Trump said. And while they may have walked alongside the neo-Nazis shouting racist taunts and white supremacists carrying torches, these fine people were not only good citizens; they were the real victims. There were, Trump said, “many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists. Okay? And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly.” He added: “You had a lot of people in that group that were there to innocently protest and very legally protest.”
This got me thinking: Who were they? Who were these very fine, innocent people protesting with the neo-Nazis and white supremacists?
It’s possible that this was one of those moments when we were to take Donald Trump seriously but not literally. But Trump made the claim several times. And he repeatedly emphasized the importance of getting the facts right on an issue of this great importance. “You don’t make statements that direct unless you know the facts. It 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, and it’s a very important statement. So I don’t want to go quickly and just make a statement for the sake of making a political statement. I want to know the facts.”
As a matter of fact, Trump mentioned his fidelity to “the facts” 14 different times at the beginning of his press conference. And he told reporters that he knew the facts better than they did. “I watched those [protests] very closely—much more closely than you people watched it.”
In his telling, much of the country misunderstood what had happened over the course of this unsettling weekend. So in this effort to recast the events of the weekend, the president seemed to be telling us to take him literally.
So I asked White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders for some guidance. What specifically did the president see that led him to conclude that “many” of those who gathered with the white supremacists were good people? Did he know any of them personally? Did he get firsthand reports from them about the event?
Although you might imagine that the White House would be eager to support these explosive claims from the president—claims that nobody else was making—my questions have gone unanswered.
There was never any question about the nature of the events planned for the Charlottesville weekend. The man behind the Unite the Right rally was Jason Kessler, a well-known racist. The rally was promoted as an opportunity to assert “the right of white people to organize for our interests.” The confirmed speakers—announced in advance—were a who’s who of white nationalist leaders, including people who justify violence to protect white interests.
On August 8, four days before the rally, Kessler joined white supremacist Chris Cantwell for Cantwell’s “Radical Agenda” podcast. They spoke of the possibility that violence would be necessary in Charlottesville in order to accomplish their goals. “It’s a shame that white people have to do this in the country that they founded,” said Kessler. “But if that’s what it comes down to—that we can start getting our rights back and take our country back, then I think that it should definitely be done.” (Cantwell appears to have now taken the podcast down, but he refers to the interview on his personal site, here.)
The event last weekend was a follow-up of sorts to a rally that white supremacists held in Charlottesville on May 13. There was little question about the nature of that rally. The Richmond Times-Dispatch reported the following day: “A rally around a Confederate statue in Charlottesville on Saturday night by torch-wielding white nationalists drew condemnations from four of the five candidates running for governor in Virginia.” Richard Spencer, a white nationalist organizer of the May event, made clear that “what brings us together is that we are white. We are a people. We will not be replaced.” Another speaker called for the creation of a white “ethno-state.”
Is it possible that the very fine people whom Trump cites weren’t aware of this history? That they didn’t know about the organizers and their motivations? Or the speakers and their views? Or the announced reasons for the rally? Or the rally in May?
Whatever misapprehensions they might have had were clarified Friday night, when the white supremacists and neo-Nazis with whom they’d joined forces shouted “F**k you faggots” and “blood and soil” and “Jews will not replace us.” Do very fine people yell racist and anti-Semitic chants at torch-lit marches? Or march silently alongside those shouting such things?
It’s hard to find video—from the truly bad people in the news media or from participants—that shows these very fine people protesting only the removal of the statue. So I asked Christopher Suarez, a reporter with the Charlottesville Daily Progress, if he saw the people Trump described when he covered the rallies over the weekend. Suarez was there from the beginning to the end of these events and, in addition to his work for the paper, captured them on a near minute-to-minute basis on Twitter, walking Friday night with the torchbearers from a stadium where they gathered beforehand to the torchlit rally before the statue. Suarez couldn’t say for sure how many of the people he encountered last weekend were very fine or innocent or unaffiliated with white supremacist or neo-Nazis. “Most of them were in the white collared shirt and khaki pants ‘uniform’ of the white supremacist groups,” he said. “I think it’s safe to say that wearing those clothes at a rally like that means you know exactly what these event organizers and leaders believe. They aren’t heritage groups. It’s about more than just Lee.”
An email quoted by the Wall Street Journal’s James Freeman supports Suarez’s account. The email comes from a source close to the Monument Fund, a Charlottesville-based nonprofit dedicated to preserving some Confederate-themed monuments and adding more balanced historical explanations to the sites. “Nobody from our group attended the protests or counter-protests,” the source tells Freeman. “We all stayed away. As everybody should have done.”
All of which is enough to make you wonder: What if Trump doesn’t know more than the reporters who were covering the event? David Duke was featured prominently in much of the coverage of weekend, and yet Trump claimed he “didn’t know David Duke was there.” The gathering in front of the Lee statue on Friday night devolved quickly into violence, with white nationalists beating those gathered to protest their presence. And yet Trump insisted that the story Friday was people “protesting very quietly the taking down of the statue.”
Trump sees what he wants to see. Even if it’s not there. And so do many of those working for him. White House talking points written as guidance for pro-Trump surrogates claimed Trump “was entirely correct” in his descriptions of the violence and “has been a voice for unity and calm.”
This is delusional. Republicans usually slow or reluctant to criticize Trump in public have done so repeatedly in recent days precisely because Trump hasn’t been a voice for unity and calm. Top U.S. military officials have taken the unusual step of declaring their opposition to bigotry and hate, at least in part to offer moral leadership and clarity that Trump has failed to provide.
In reality, Trump has exacerbated our differences and emboldened the most divisive figures in our culture. And they’re hearing what they want to hear from Trump.
On Saturday, David Duke responded to a tweet from a leftist criticizing the founders of the country for owning slaves. “President Trump, do you hear that? Looks like it’s time for you to disavow and condemn George Washington,” Duke wrote, sarcastically. Three days later, Trump made the same point at his press conference. “George Washington was a slave owner. Was George Washington a slave owner? So will George Washington now lose his status? Are we going to take down—excuse me, are we going to take down statues to George Washington?”
That argument didn’t begin with David Duke and it won’t end with Donald Trump. And there is a legitimate debate to be had about how we handle these monuments. But it’s not hard to understand why the white supremacists and neo-Nazis, including Duke, celebrated Trump’s words on Tuesday. Duke thanked Trump for the “honesty and courage” it took to condemn the “alt-left” and Richard Spencer said it was clear that Trump “cares about the truth.”
The very fine people who marched with them could not be reached for comment.
