Guest editorial: President’s indefensible statements

Tuesday marked a sad day for the nation.

Our leader let us down.

President Donald Trump erased any lingering doubt about his true feelings over the Charlottesville tragedy when he doubled down on his Saturday assertion faulting white supremacist demonstrators and those opposing them.

One day after a carefully scripted statement condemning the racial hate groups who gathered in Charlottesville under the banner “Unite the Right,” the president defiantly rambled through an impromptu press conference faulting “both sides” for the violence.

Neo-Nazis, the KKK and other white supremacist groups are, as far as President Trump is concerned, on equal moral footing with anti-racism protesters.

“I think there’s blame on both sides,” Trump repeated to reporters at New York’s Trump Tower on Tuesday. There were “very fine people, on both sides,” he said.

Let there be no doubt. This was the president’s straight from the heart and gut reaction. His real reaction. His words were incredible and indefensible to us and to most Americans.

Really? Both sides are guilty? The side with torches and swastikas and racist and anti-Semitic signs and chants were equivalent to those who opposed them?

That point of view, expressed by anyone, would be reprehensible. That it came from the president of the United States is tragic.

All you really need to know about Trump’s words Tuesday come in the near-immediate tweet from former Klu Klux Klan leader David Duke.

“Thank you President Trump for your honesty & courage to tell the truth about #Charlottesville & condemn the leftist terrorists,” Duke tweeted.

Strong support from Duke would normally be a matter of shame and to be quickly refuted. But not for this president.

U.S. Rep. Charlie Dent, a Republican from Pennsylvania, tweeted an appropriate message to the president, which would ideally be the end of the conversation: “@POTUS must stop the moral equivalency! AGAIN, white supremacists were to blame for the violence in #Charlottesville.” 

One further point that must be stressed. This moment isn’t about statues or historic markers. There is a time and a place to debate their message and merit. Good, thoughtful people can disagree on whether they should be taken down or allowed to stand as a reminder of our troubled past.

No. This is about some people thinking others don’t belong, or that they own a moral superiority based on skin color or religious beliefs, both ridiculous assumptions.

Those thought processes are threatening and alarming. They propagate racial division and mindless hate.

By not shouting them down from the instant the tragedy occurred and then even escalating matters further on Tuesday, the president has done the nation a disservice and potentially made it a more dangerous place.

This editorial appeared in the Sunbury, Pennsylvania, Daily Item