Trump Locates Very Fine People On Both Sides Of Rally Organized By Neo-Nazis, Resolving Long-Standing Concern That A Divided Nation Could No Longer Recognize The Good In Everyone

NEW YORK. Standing in the marble lobby of his namesake tower on Tuesday, President Donald Trump announced that, following a careful review of the weekend's events, he had successfully located very fine people on both sides of a rally that had been organized by neo-Nazis, white nationalists, and former Klansmen, resolving a long-standing concern that the nation had grown too divided to recognize the good in everyone.

The president's findings arrived three days after a man drove a car into a crowd of counter-protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injuring dozens of others. While commentators had moved quickly to assign fault to the marchers who arrived carrying lit torches and chanting against Jews, the administration urged the public not to rush to judgment until all participants had received appropriate credit.

"You had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides," the president explained, clarifying that not everyone walking alongside the men in swastika armbands could fairly be assumed to share their views. "What about the alt-left that came charging at, as you say, the alt-right? Do they have any semblance of guilt?"

Officials within the administration described the equivalence as a routine accounting measure, noting that any large gathering, whether assembled to defend a Confederate statue or to oppose the people defending it, will naturally contain a mix of temperaments. The president, they added, had simply applied the same standard to both columns, one of which had spent the previous evening marching by torchlight and one of which had not.

The assessment drew swift praise from those it described, with former Klan leader David Duke publicly thanking the president for his honesty and courage, and rather more muted responses from members of the president's own party, who issued statements condemning hatred in the abstract while declining to name the specific hatred on offer. The White House, for its part, maintained that the remarks had been taken out of a context in which they read no better.

At press time, the president had reaffirmed that the people marching to preserve a statue of a man who waged war on the United States were, on balance, among the finest the country had to offer.