So now we know the marvelous courage and the full level of moral leadership of President Donald Trump: He’s brave enough to criticize Meryl Streep and Rosie O’Donnell by name, but he trembles before condemning those who would lynch black people and murder Jews by the millions.
How are you feeling now, all you folks who imagined Trump’s “birtherism” bunk about Barack Obama was just some passing political silliness?
And you voted for him anyway.
How are you feeling now, all you folks who wondered why Trump couldn’t bring himself to mention Jews on International Holocaust Remembrance Day?
And you kept supporting him anyway.
How are you feeling now, all you folks who watched your children pulled from Jewish community centers around the country – including here in Baltimore – during that run of bomb threats and vandalism last winter, which seemed to move this president not a bit?
How do you like this guy who can’t bring himself to criticize David Duke (or Vladimir Putin) but re-tweets garbage from anti-Semitic Twitter feeds? (Or have you already forgotten Hillary Clinton’s face atop a pile of cash, and beside a six-pointed star, during the campaign?)
So now we have that strutting gang of neo-Nazis and white supremacists down in Charlottesville, Va., over the weekend. They’re out there wearing their Trump hats. They’re chanting, “You won’t replace us.”
And they alternate this with, “Jews won’t replace us.”
And this president wants to suggest moral equivalency between these haters and those who stand up to them.
Instead he speaks of “hatred, bigotry and violence that’s on many sides.”
Really? On many sides? We used to call this kind of language giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
The white supremacist website The Daily Stormer, exulted, “[Trump] didn’t attack us. 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. Really, really good. God bless him.”
And then there was David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan leader, who said, “We are going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump. That’s what we believed in. That’s why we voted for Donald Trump.”
Is that why?
That’s the question millions of Trump voters have to ask themselves today.
Somehow, Ivanka Trump and Melania Trump could condemn these outlaws. Somehow, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio and Jeff Sessions could condemn them.
But the president of the United States couldn’t find the right words?
It took a firestorm of anger, and a full weekend of media condemnation, to eventually prompt some un-named person at the White House to try to clean up Trump’s mealy-mouthed language.
But the damage is now done. They can bring out the president anytime they want now and have him issue all the “proper” condemnations he feels pressured to make. But it will look like an act of political prudence. Donald Trump has already told us how he really feels.
A former Baltimore Sun columnist and WJZ-TV commentator, Michael Olesker is the author of six books, most recently “Front Stoops in the Fifties: Baltimore Legends Come of Age” (Johns Hopkins University Press).
Top photo: President Donald Trump with Stephen Bannon
Also see:
- Charlottesville and ‘Many Sides’
- Jewish Leaders Condemn Charlottesville Violence and Trump’s Reaction
- Charlottesville Jewish community hires security
- Hate in Charlottesville: The day the Nazi called me Shlomo
- Ivanka Trump condemns white supremacist rally in Charlottesville
- Baltimore Fishbowl: City Removes its Four Confederate Monuments Overnight
Cruel, inappropriate, egomanical, outrageous and bullying are all attributes that pass for presidential these days, writes Michael Olesker.
Someone needed to tell Donald Trump that his appearance at a UFC fight over the weekend was not a good look, writes Michael Olesker.
The Trump administration's invoking of religion is reminiscent of the words and actions of one of history's most brutal Crusaders, writes Michael Olesker.