Donald Trump defends White Nationalists and claims that the "Alt-Left" started the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia.

(The Nazi support starts around the 7:10 mark.)

 Courtesy of the New York Times:

President Trump angrily defended himself on Tuesday against criticism that he did not specifically condemn Nazi and white supremacist groups following the weekend’s deadly racial unrest in Virginia, and at one point questioned whether the movement to pull down statues of Confederate leaders would escalate to the desecration of George Washington. 

In a long, combative exchange with reporters at Trump Tower in Manhattan, the president repeatedly rejected a torrent of bipartisan criticism for waiting several days before naming the right-wing groups and placing blame on “many sides” for the violence on Saturday that ended with the death of a young woman after a car crashed into a crowd. 

He said that “before I make a statement, I like to know the facts.” 

And he criticized “alt-left” groups that he claimed were “very, very violent” when they sought to confront the nationalist and Nazi groups that had gathered in Charlottesville, Va., to protest the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee from a park. He said there is “blame on both sides.” 

“Many of those people were there to protest the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee,” Mr. Trump said. “This week, it is Robert E. Lee and this week, Stonewall Jackson. Is it George Washington next? You have to ask yourself, where does it stop?” 

He noted that the first American president had owned slaves. 

Mr. Trump defended those gathered in the Charlottesville park to protest the statue’s removal, saying, “I’ve condemned neo-Nazis. I’ve condemned many different groups. Not all of those people were neo-Nazis, believe me. Not all of those people were white supremacists by any stretch.”

(Uh..that was a white nationalist protest march. Of course they were white nationalists.)


Again and again, Mr. Trump said that the portrayal of nationalist protesters in the city were not all Nazis or white supremacists, and he said it was unfair to suggest that they were. “Not all of those people were neo-Nazis, believe me. 

Not all of those people were white supremacists by any stretch,” he said, adding that blame for the violence in the city – which also took the lives of two Virginia state troopers when their helicopter crashed – should also be on people from “the left” who came to oppose the nationalist protesters. 

“You had a group on one side and the other, and they came at each other with clubs, and it was vicious and horrible. It was a horrible thing to watch,” the president said. “There is another side. There was a group on this side, you can call them the left. You have just called them the left, that came violently attacking the other group. You can say what you want. That’s the way it is.”

You know I often talk about watching Donald Trump speak with my jaw hanging on the floor in disbelief.

And that is certainly how I watched this.

Trump's attempts to blame the counter protesters and suggest that THEY were the ones who started the violence was, simply put, stunning.

He provided cover for the neo-Nazis, Klan members, and White Supremacists who beat peaceful protesters and murdered a young woman.

Thank you President Trump for your honesty & courage to tell the truth about #Charlottesville & condemn the leftist terrorists in BLM/Antifa https://t.co/tTESdV4LP0

— David Duke (@DrDavidDuke) August 15, 2017

And clearly they both heard and appreciated that.