President Trump finally said what the nation needed to hear. Monday afternoon, he firmly denounced the white supremacists and neo-Nazis who wreaked havoc on Charlottesville, Va., over the past weekend.
The problem is, his words ring hollow as they come 48 hours too late. Saturday, in the wake of escalating violence between white supremacists and counter protestors, President Trump had a chance to unite a nation aghast by the despicable demonstration of bigotry and the loss of life as a result. He could have called out the demonstrators displaying swastikas and wearing shirts quoting Hitler for what they are: white supremacists and neo-Nazis. He could have called the man who deliberately ran people over and killed an innocent woman a terrorist.
Instead, the nation was greeted with a tepid message from the president, who pointed fingers at “all sides” of the protests in Virginia. No mention of denouncing the hate groups. No strong words about terrorism. The absence of tough talk in the context of Charlottesville was particularly poignant as it came from a man who routinely takes to Twitter to malign fellow Republicans or pick fights with the press.
The hate-fueled protests in Virginia and the subsequent death of a 32-year-old woman did not prompt a Twitter storm from the tweeter-in-chief as some may have expected. GOP lawmakers expressed a resounding sense of disappointment in President Trump’s response to the tragedy in Charlottesville. From Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, who invoked his brother’s death fighting Nazis in WWII to Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Cory Gardner, R-Colo., explicitly urging the president to denounce the protestors by name as neo-Nazis and white supremacists engaging in domestic terrorism, it was clear pressure was mounting from within Trump’s own party to say more than his initial statement.
Trump often bangs the drum about the necessity to call “radical Islamic terrorism” by its name, yet when a white man with alleged Nazi sympathies commits an act of domestic terror, there seems to be a reluctance to call that criminal act by its name. Even the strongest statement coming from Trump did not call Saturday’s violence as a domestic act of terror. The public is left to ask itself why their president is employing a double standard between radical Islamic terrorism and homegrown extremist terrorism.
Furthermore, on the same day Trump finally called out the Charlottesville protesters as white supremacists and denounced racism, he insulted Ken Frazier for quitting a White House business roundtable in the wake of how Trump initially responded to the unrest in Virginia. Frazier is the CEO of Merck, who happens to be African-American. Trump also revealed that he is considering pardoning Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was just found guilty in connection to a racial profiling case.
Yes, this is the president’s right, but it sends the wrong message at a time when the nation is reeling from racially-charged demonstrations.
I am not calling Trump a racist, and I’m glad he finally said the words that needed to come from the commander-in-chief. But, I’m disappointed for our nation. Our president should always be compelled to immediately denounce racism, bigotry, and hate. This should be a natural and immediate reaction to a situation like Charlottesville, not a coerced scripted statement done out of apparent necessity.
Capri Cafaro (@thehonorablecsc) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a former member of the Ohio State Senate, where she was the Senate minority leader. She is now an Executive in Residence at American University’s School of Public Affairs.
If you would like to write an op-ed for the Washington Examiner, please read our guidelines on submissions here.
