Even some of President Trump’s allies were surprised by his reaction to the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., that resulted in the death of a 32-year-old woman Saturday.
Twelve hours after Omar Mateen fatally shot 49 people at an Orlando nightclub in June 2016, Trump, then on his way to the Republican presidential nomination, had already issued three statements condemning the act of “radical Islamic terrorism.”
“His reaction was swift and direct, and it showed voters he wasn’t afraid to call it what it was,” said a former Trump campaign aide who requested anonymity in order to speak candidly about the president.
“I don’t know why he took a different approach this time around,” the aide told the Washington Examiner. “These guys were walking around with Confederate flags and Swastikas on their jackets, chanting ‘Sieg heil.’ It was clear who they were and what they believe – stuff I know President Trump would never condone.”
Trump responded to the dangerous clash of alt-right rally-goers and counter-protesters in real time on Saturday, telling reporters and TV cameras at his Bedminster, N.J., golf club that he condemned the “egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides.”
“It’s been going on for a long time in our country. Not Donald Trump, not Barack Obama, this has been going on for a long, long time,” the president said.
But absent from his initial remarks was a direct denunciation of “the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups,” all of which Trump declined to call out by name until his televised statement Monday afternoon.
“The statement that President Trump should have delivered on Saturday should have been focused only on the white supremacists and those elements, and then at some later date a broader conversation about racism can be had,” said Media Research Center President Brent Bozell, a conservative figure who has largely supported Trump despite endorsing Texas Sen. Ted Cruz in the 2016 GOP primary.
“He should have said more,” Bozell opined.
Several Republicans who grumbled about the president’s initial response to the Charlottesville rally issued statements of their own on Saturday that explicitly rebuked the groups who organized it. Many of them simultaneously urged Trump to be harsher in his own condemnation.
“We should call evil by its name,” tweeted Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, around the same time that Sen. Marco Rubio R-Fla., said it was “very important” for Trump to “describe [the] events in Charlottesville for what they are, a terror attack by white supremacists.”
Such entreaties to the president grew louder on Sunday, after an unnamed White House spokesperson responded to the criticism with a statement that many felt should have come from Trump himself.
“The President said very strongly in his statement yesterday that he condemns all forms of violence, bigotry, and hatred. Of course that includes white supremacists, KKK, neo-Nazi and all extremist groups,” the official said.
In addition to exposing himself to charges of hypocrisy after rushing to condemn terrorizing acts by international gangs and Islamic jihadists, Trump “failed an important leadership test and reopened old wounds,” said his former campaign aide.
Some of those wounds date back decades before Trump entered the political scene as a candidate for office.
In 1973, for instance, a 27-year-old Trump and his father, Fred, were sued by the Justice Department for discriminating against black tenants at their properties. The 20-month legal battle, which included a $100 million countersuit for defamation, finally ended when the Trumps agreed to “thoroughly acquaint themselves” with the Fair Housing Act and run a series of ads in local newspapers that encouraged minorities to apply for housing at their properties. Trump emerged without ever acknowledging wrongdoing.
The New York real estate mogul re-emerged years later as the face of the so-called birther movement, which questioned the legitimacy of former President Barack Obama’s birth certificate and the first African-American president’s eligibility to hold the highest office. Trump finally distanced himself from birtherism months before last year’s presidential contest, telling the nation during a much-anticipated news conference that “President Barack Obama was born in the United States. Period.”
That declaration came months after Trump had landed himself in hot water for initially refusing to disavow an endorsement from ex-Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. His reluctance invited charges of racism from opponents of his presidential campaign.
“I’m puzzled because those who know him personally, they say he’s got a very good relationship with men and women of color – that his personal life contradicts what you saw on the campaign trail,” Bozell told the Examiner.
He continued, “Where David Duke was concerned, I thought [Trump] would be rushing to condemn him. I’m puzzled by it.”
Trump’s former campaign aide suggested the 48-hour gap between the Charlottesville rally and the president’s explicit condemnation of the groups involved “will probably make it harder for people to believe he meant what he said.”
For that exact reason, another Republican ally said the president should have let his original statement stand, even if his remarks on Monday “helped put an end to the groups getting attention that shouldn’t be getting attention.”
“I think his initial statement, while broad, was sufficient in condemning all forms of racism,” Michael Williams, a GOP candidate for Georgia governor, told the Examiner. “He came out strongly in his first statement. He came back today and specifically denounced some of the groups, which I think it gives some of those groups an even larger platform.”
