Trump Locates Very Fine People On Both Sides Of Deadly Neo-Nazi Rally In Charlottesville

The Filing

NEW YORK. Standing in the lobby of his namesake Manhattan skyscraper on Tuesday, President Donald J. Trump moved decisively to correct what aides described as a growing imbalance in the national conversation, informing reporters that the weekend rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, organized by neo-Nazis and white nationalists, had in fact contained "very fine people on both sides."

The clarification came three days after a self-identified neo-Nazi drove a car into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injuring dozens more, and four days after marchers had walked through the University of Virginia campus carrying torches and chanting "Jews will not replace us." The President, who had spent the intervening days under pressure to address the event in firmer terms, used the press conference to assure the country that the assembled crowd of torch-bearers had been unfairly characterized.

"You had some very fine people on both sides," Trump told reporters, adding that "I think there's blame on both sides" for the violence. Sources within the administration described the remarks as an effort to restore proportionality, noting that the President had grown concerned that public attention was being directed disproportionately at the side of the rally that had brought the torches, the flags, and the car.

The President further introduced the term "alt-left" to describe the counterprotesters, a designation White House officials said would allow Americans to consider both groups as functionally equivalent and thereby spare themselves the exhausting work of telling them apart. Trump noted that the counterprotesters had come "charging" at the marchers, a sequence of events he characterized as raising legitimate questions of shared responsibility.

Within days, former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke had publicly thanked the President for his "honesty and courage," an endorsement the White House did not seek to return but also declined to refuse. Allies of the President said the press conference had successfully reframed a fatal act of political violence as a misunderstanding with two reasonable interpretations, an outcome they regarded as a welcome return to civility.

At press time, the President had identified the real victim of the weekend as the word "both," which he confirmed would be expected to keep doing the heavy lifting indefinitely.

Who Benefits

§Donald J. Trump, who avoided alienating a faction of his political base by declining to single out the side of the rally responsible for the torches, the chants, and the fatal car attack.
§The organizers of the "Unite the Right" rally, who received, from the sitting President of the United States, a public assurance that their event had included "very fine people."
§David Duke and the white nationalist movement, who treated the remarks as a presidential endorsement and said so out loud, with Duke thanking Trump by name.
§Richard Spencer and the self-described "alt-right," whose project of mainstreaming their movement was advanced considerably by a President who placed it on equal moral footing with the people protesting it.
§The nationalist wing of the West Wing, including chief strategist Steve Bannon, whose worldview the President's framing closely tracked.
§Future organizers of similar events, who were shown that a rally ending in a homicide could still be discussed by the head of state in the language of even-handed regret.

Sourced to the public record · presented without editorial embellishment