1. If you are fighting to prevent a statue of Robert E. Lee from being taken down, you are, in fact, a white supremacist. Trump said today of Charlottesville that there were "very fine people...in that group that were there to protest the taking down, of to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name." No, you are not a very fine person. You support the Confederacy and slavery, which is what Robert E. Lee fought for. By definition, you are not "very fine." This is not difficult.
2. Trump said, "It looked like they had some rough, bad people, neo-Nazis, white nationalists, whatever you want to call ‘em. But you had a lot of people in that group that were there to innocently protest and very legally protest." If you march with neo-Nazis and chant racist things with white nationalists, it doesn't matter how legal your protest is. You are still a Nazi. You are still a white nationalist. And, legal march or not, you should be scorned. Not scorning them is supporting them.
3. Trump said, "Many of those people were there to protest the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee. So this week, it’s Robert E. Lee, I noticed that Stonewall Jackson’s coming down. I wonder, is it George Washington next week? And is it Thomas Jefferson the week after. You know, you really do have to ask yourself, where does it stop?" George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were slaveowners. They also helped create the United States which led to the freeing of the slaves. It's complicated, and, yes, we should have a discussion of their place in our understanding of history. Robert E. Lee was a slaveowner who, as I said above, fought so that a country of seceded states could keep slaves. The same goes for Stonewall Jackson. Lee and Jackson are not equal to Washington and Jefferson just like Donald Trump is not worth a hair on Abraham Lincoln's balls.
3a. Could we clone Lincoln from a hair on his balls? Just thinking out loud here.
4. In the same way, both sides of the Charlottesville conflict were not equal, despite Trump's insistence that they were. Yes, there was violence from the counterprotesters, but nothing like the violence from the "innocently" protesting racists, including, you know, murder. And, not to get redundant here, but one side was Nazis. The other side was against Nazis. To say "there is blame on both sides" is to say that Nazis are the same as not-Nazis. If you cannot say that not-Nazis are objectively better than Nazis, you have nothing useful to add to any conversation.
5. Trump said that Friday night's tiki-torch protest was done "very quietly." Many pictures from the event show white men and a few white women yelling or chanting. It is patently false to say it was quiet. And if they weren't chanting, they were making the Nazi salute, which is louder than just about any noise.
6. If I were John McCain, I'd be looking out for polonium in my tea. When a McCain comment was brought up, Trump gritted his teeth and said, "Senator McCain? Senator McCain. You mean the one that voted against Obamacare? Who is Senator McCain? You mean Senator McCain who voted against us getting good health care?" He sounded stabby. Also, if I were John McCain, I'd think nothing of using my last year or so on earth to destroy the dangerous man who mocked my imprisonment and torture.
6a. If anyone know who these supposed rational Republicans are, now would be a good time for them to reveal themselves. Hopefully, the denouncement are rolling in, or we're in deep, deep trouble.
7. Anyone who can watch that press conference and not think that we are being led by a deranged, out-of-control racist is someone who will never be convinced about Trump's unfitness for office. Which means we should be seeing a New York Times article about those people in the next day or so.
7a. Obviously, everything Trump said yesterday was a lie, but we already realised that.
7b. We knew we were in scary territory with Trump. We are now living the beginning of a dystopian TV series. It's up to us to make sure it's canceled before it gets renewed for another season.
