I just returned home from a road trip down through Durham, North Carolina, where, by the way, a lot of folks just gathered this evening to pull down a Confederate statue, and I’d love to tell you all about it. Every time I sit down to write about biscuits, baseball, and fried chicken, though, I find my attention being dragged back to the recent events in Charlottesville and our President’s apparent inability to distance himself from the racists who put him in office.
Today, of course, more than two full days after 32 year old Heather Heyer was murdered in Charlottesville by a white supremacist, Trump finally addressed the subject of white nationalism directly. [As you’ll recall, in the aftermath of the event, Trump refused to acknowledge that Heyer’s murder had been an act of domestic terrorism, saying only that there had been violence on “many sides,” before turning his back on reporters as they asked what he felt about the fact that America’s racist groups are among his most virulent supporters.] Reading directly from a teleprompter, word-for-word, Trump, clearly against his will, uttered the phrase, “Racism is evil, and those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, Neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.” To his credit, he did so without visibly rolling his eyes, but you could tell that he wanted to… Here’s the video.
Two days after blaming "all sides" for violence in #Charlottesville, Trump says KKK, Neo-Nazis and White Supremacists are “repugnant” pic.twitter.com/gNIP1ZtiKk
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) August 14, 2017
And, yes, he did say, “We must rediscover the bonds of love.”
So, yeah, it took him over 48 hours to come out and essentially say, “Nazis are bad.” And, when he did, he not only buried it at the end of an address on the economy, but, just afterward, said that he’s considering the possibility of pardoning racist Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio. It’s as though he literally told the American people that racists were bad, but then immediately turned to a Fox News camera, and winked. [For what it’s worth, he also did not tweet his new-found belief of his that white supremacists are “repugnant.”]
It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that today’s presidential statement, which, by the way, only happened because members of the White House staff told Trump that he absolutely had to say something, is being taken less than seriously by America’s white supremacists. David Duke, our elder statesman of hate, who yesterday said that the racist uprising in Charlottesville was just a “fulfillment” of the “Trump promise,” today told his followers on Twitter that the President had only said those words because he’d been “bullied” by the “fake news”. [“President Trump, please, for God’s sake, don’t feel like you need to say these things,” Duke would later convey to the president though the press. He also, yesterday, had the following to say to Trump on Twitter. “I would recommend you to take a good look in the mirror and remember it was White Americans who put you in the presidency,” he said, “not radial leftists.”] And, apparently, the folks a the white nationalist site The Daily Stormer felt the same way, saying that Trump only said what he said because he was forced to by the “whining Jew media.” “(Trump) only disavowed us at the point of a Jewish weapon,” they said shortly after the President read his prepared remarks.
The good news is, for all Trump and his people claim this is just a case of the “fake news” making a story out of thin air, it would appear that some powerful people behind the scenes aren’t seeing it that way. In fact, just today, three more of America’s most successful corporate CEOs announced that they would be leaving President Trump’s American Manufacturing Council, joining Elon Musk, who left the group after Trump announced that the U.S. would be pulling out of the Paris Accord on Climate Change. It all started this morning when Ken Frazier of Merck announced that he would be stepping down, as he felt a “responsibility to take a stand against intolerance and extremism.” This, as you might imagine, didn’t sit well with our vindictive president, who took to Twitter to attack. [If only he’d been as fast in condemning the actions of his neo-Nazis supporters a few days before.]
To their credit, two more CEOs then followed Frazier’s lead. Citing his company’s position on “unity, diversity and inclusion” Under Armour’s CEO Kevin Plank took to Twitter to announce that he’d be leaving. And, shortly after, word came out that Intel CEO Brian Krzanich had also stepped down. What’s more, several other members of the group apparently aren’t avoiding the press and they consider their options.
Here’s a list of those who remain as of this evening. I suspect, however, more will drop tomorrow. [note: A few of these have recently left due to job changes, and not because it’s become apparent to them that our president is conflicted when it comes to Naziism.]
So, that’s what’s happening today in the America… Our beleaguered president, after days of being asked how he felt about Naziism, finally came out and begrudgingly read a statement off a teleprompter about how it’s bad. Then, when the bad press didn’t stop, he exploded in a fit of anger like a giant, narcissistic toddler, who, after being told to apologize for having done something horrifically antisocial, like taking a shit on a neighbor’s coffee table, discovers that he’s still going to be punished for it, and won’t be getting his two scoops of ice cream.
And, speaking of the Jews, and their role in all of this, according to Trump friend Alex Jones, the Nazis we saw in Charlottesville weren’t Nazis at all, but Jewish actors. You see, it’s all part of the Jewish conspiracy. “Literally they’re just Jewish actors, he said yesterday. “I mean, quite frankly,” he added, “I’ve been to these events, a lot of the KKK guys with their hats off look like they’re from the cast of Seinfeld.” And, judging from the comments section here today, many in my audience believe him… As Trump would say, “Sad.”
update: The President’s business councils are now officially dead. Just a little over 24 hours after saying with authority that he’d be able to fill the slots of those CEOs jumping ship, he conceded that the advisory councils in question would be disbanded. Here’s the first email, in which he says that these groups of his will go on regardless of how many people drop out.
And here’s his following tweet, stating that he’s decided to disband the groups. At the time he posted this, I believe, six CEOs had dropped out over his handling of the situation in Charlottesville. For what it’s worth, though, he didn’t decide to disband the groups. No, it would appear that the CEOs on the councils decided to kill them.
