Trump bestows moral equivalency
Cheri Jacobus, Republican consultant: “Donald Trump carefully, purposefully and strategically established moral equivalency between the Nazis and white supremacists in Charlottesville, and those protesting them. Can you imagine Winston Churchill or Franklin D. Roosevelt bestowing similar moral equivalency on Hitler’s Nazi Germany and the millions of allied troops fighting and dying to rid the planet of such evil? Charlottesville, tragically, will now serve as a mecca for white supremacists who firmly believe that with Trump, their day has finally, at long last, arrived.”
Daily Stormer, neo-Nazi website: “Trump comments were good. He didn’t attack us. He just said the nation should come together. Nothing specific against us. He said that we need to study why people are so angry, and implied that there was hate … on both sides! So he implied the antifa (antifascists) are haters. There was virtually no counter-signaling of us at all. He said he loves us all. Also refused to answer a question about white nationalists supporting him. No condemnation at all. When asked to condemn, he just walked out of the room. ... God bless him.”
Susan Miller, USA TODAY: “This is not the Charlottesville I know. Torch-toting white nationalists whose chants of ‘white lives matter’ and ‘you will not replace us’ pierced the night Friday as they marched down the marble steps of the Rotunda at the University of Virginia. ... The hatred, the bigotry — the bloodshed. How could this be happening at the home of my beloved alma mater and in a progressive city that boasts a warm and inclusive environment?”
Caleb Ecarma, USA TODAY Opinion intern: “Hysteria and violence (took) hold in downtown Charlottesville. I was tear gassed, pepper sprayed and hit with flying projectiles — and I consider myself beyond lucky compared with the many I witnessed get beaten into a bloody mess. If a movement is willing to instigate violence and malice at this extreme level, then they can no longer be brushed off as merely trolls or Internet losers. ... As a 20-year-old student journalist, I came to report on a racist movement that’s gained popularity, but I left the city with a reminder of the racists who have always existed in America — from the back roads of South Carolina to the White House.”