CNN anchor Jake Tapper asked Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer if President Trump’s praise of armed protesters who stormed the Michigan state Capitol in Lansing were comparable to his remarks after the deadly white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017.
“These protesters came after President Trump tweeted ‘Liberate Michigan,'” Tapper said before mentioning comments made by Halie Soifer, the executive director of the Jewish democratic council of America.
“What kind of depraved elected official calls a heavily-armed militia classified as an antigovernment extremist group blocking a governor’s office ‘very good people’? Soifer, a Michigan native, asked on Friday. “The same one who called neo-Nazis marching in Charlottesville ‘very fine people.'”
What kind of depraved elected official calls a heavily-armed militia classified as an antigovernment extremist group blocking a governor’s office “very good people”?
The same one who called neo-Nazis marching in Charlottesville “very fine people.” https://t.co/1L2iDW4sBM
— Halie Soifer (@HalieSoifer) May 1, 2020
“Is that how you see these protesters,” Tapper asked Whitmer. “In that vein, in that extreme?”
“Well, some of the outrageousness of what happened at our capitol this week, you know, depicted some of the worst racism and awful parts of our history in this country,” Whitmer responded. “The confederate flags and nooses, the swastikas, the, you know, behavior that you’ve seen in all of the clips, is not representative of who we are in Michigan.”
Trump urged Whitmer to “make a deal” with the protesters, some of whom came to the rally bearing signs with racist slogans, nooses, and Confederate flags.
The president took sharp criticism in late 2017 after he said there were “fine people on both sides” of the deadly confrontation in Virginia, before later correcting himself and condemning the neo-Nazis there.
