During a fiery question and answer session with the leftwing media Tuesday afternoon, President Trump arrived loaded for bear. The presser was vintage Trump. Combative, oftentimes hilarious, and filled with deeply satisfying moments that sometimes happen when Trump is at his best, moments when stark truths are finally said out loud, and by the President of the United States, no less.
The event was advertised as something that was supposed to be about infrastructure, but it was obvious from the beginning that the president had any number of other things on his mind. It was just as obvious that the media was hoping to get a piece of him, to bait him. None of it worked. Trump appeared to enjoy every moment of the hostile back and forth. Moreover, he had three truths he wanted to communicate to the American people, and so that is exactly what he did and we are now a better country for it.
1. “Not all of those people were neo-Nazis.”
Trump again blasted the white supremacists in Charlottesville, and he also tore into the man charged with driving his car into a group of Antifa counter-protesters as a “disgrace to his family and country … a murderer.”
However, Trump also pointed out that not everyone who protested that day against the removal of Gen. Robert E. Lee’s statue is a racist. Some came in good faith. In other words, Trump is breaking through the media narrative that instantly defines anyone opposed to tearing down confederate statues as a Nazi:
Those people — all of those people — excuse me. I’ve condemned neo-Nazis. I’ve condemned many different groups. But not all of those people were neo-Nazis, believe me. Not all of those people were White Supremacists, by any stretch. Those people were also there because they wanted to protest the taking down of a statue, Robert E. Lee.
And you take a look at some of the groups and you see — and you’d 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.
It should be noted, but won’t be by our dishonest media, that Trump also said the same about some of those on the other side of the protest, he accurately pointed out that not every counter-protester was there to commit violence.
But you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides. You had people in that group — excuse me, excuse me — I saw the same pictures as you did.
The media’s response to this truth has been unhinged. They are claiming Trump believes there are good people in the white supremacist movement. This despite the fact he made clear — without being asked — that this is exactly what he did not mean:
I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally. But you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists.
And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly. Now, in the other group also, you had some fine people, but you also had troublemakers.
2. “Are we going to take down statues to George Washington?”
Although Trump made clear that he believes, and appropriately so, that the decision to remove statues should be left to local governments, he also made another clarifying point: Where does this madness end?
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 — are we going to take down statues to George Washington?
How about Thomas Jefferson? What do you think of Thomas Jefferson? You like him? 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.
Quite hilariously the disingenuous is pretending Trump is insane for lumping together Lee with Jefferson and Washington, even though the calls from the Left to memory-hole our slave-owning Founding Fathers, to remove their statues and tributes, have been floated for more than a decade.
Where will it end?
Lincoln was serious about freeing the slaves and shipping them back to Africa. West Virginia is lousy with tributes to Klansman (and Democrat) Robert Byrd. Ulysses Grant owned slaves. Franklin Roosevelt interned the Japanese.
The media can pretend the Left’s Taliban-ish crusade for historical purity is not real, but it is, and Americans know it.
3. “There was violence on both sides.”
This is, without question, the most important point the president made, and he made it repeatedly.
Post-Charlottesville, the MSM’s shameless propaganda push, their audacious and coordinated attempt to write the culpability of Antifa out of Saturday’s riot is not only Orwellian, it is (and this is by design) dangerous. The media obviously wants Antifa motivated and out there, wants their own personal army of Brownshirts fanning out across the country to break heads, not just of Nazis but of everyday Trump supporters, of anyone on the Right who dares hold an unacceptable opinion.
Trump was having none of it:
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.
But there is another side. There was a group on this side, you can call them the Left. You’ve just called them the Left — that came violently attacking the other group. So you can say what you want, but that’s the way it is. …
I think there’s blame on both sides. … I have no doubt about it, and you don’t have any doubt about it either. And if you reported it accurately, you would say [so].
The enraged media (nothing enrages our media like the truth) is really angry over this and are claiming Trump is taking back his statements condemning white supremacy. Even though, as you can see above, he actually doubled down in his condemnation of white supremacist groups.
The alt-right and the alt-left, the neo-Nazis and Antifa … These are two sides of the same horrifying coin and for the sake of our country, both must be called out and condemned.
On Saturday, Trump wisely condemned both sides but not by name.
On Monday he condemned the white supremacist groups.
Today, he dragged the media’s favorite leftwing supremacists out into the spotlight.
Trump’s taking hell for it, but he is doing the only moral thing — telling the truth.
Source: The Daily Wire
