President Trump addressed the nation Monday afternoon and, for the first time, called out the white nationalists who have rallied to his banner since the beginning of his campaign. After three deaths and dozens more wounded in Charlottesville, the president finally decried evil that is bigotry and racism.
This is altogether fitting and right for Trump to describe and decry evil. It’s also late—48 hours from his first tweet to be exact.
Suddenly an unenergetic executive, the president has been slow to respond to terrorism inside his own country. For the last few days, Trump has been forced to clarify generalities and platitudes into some sort of cohesive position. Now on Monday, he finally offered concrete condemnation.
“Racism is evil and those who cause violence in its names 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,” the president finally said after days of deflecting.
And because he’s late, because he didn’t do what he should have done the first time around, Trump deserves partial credit. That’s not according to an arbitrary and unfair media standard. It’s the standard that Trump set for himself when he criticized his predecessor, former President Barack Obama.
Again and again, Trump rightly called out Democrats for being unwilling to confront “radical Islamic terrorism.” Now that he’s in office, he’s failed to do on time what he decried.
And the president made a good and decent statement, one that would’ve been more than welcome two days ago. To overcome his tardiness then, Trump will have to work doubly hard.
Philip Wegmann is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
