“George Conway, often referred to as Mr. Kellyanne Conway by those who know him, is VERY jealous of his wife’s success & angry that I, with her help, didn’t give him the job he so desperately wanted. I barely know him but just take a look, a stone cold LOSER & husband from hell!” Rather than focus on issues that mattered that day, he let Mr. Conway’s criticism distract him completely. He redirected the news cycle toward total nonsense. Not to mention the fact that he openly derided the spouse of one of his employees, another workplace red flag.
These flare-ups are constant. They come at the worst times. For instance, on the anniversary of the September 11 attacks, the president couldn’t bring himself to hold off on politics for the morning to honor the victims and their families. He lashed out at Democrats and media outlets. “In a hypothetical poll, done by one of the worst pollsters of them all, the Amazon Washington Post/ABC, which predicted I would lose to Crooked Hillary by 15 points (how did that work out?), Sleepy Joe, Pocahontas and virtually all others would beat me in the General election,” he tweeted at daybreak. “This is a phony suppression poll, meant to build up their Democrat partners.” “Damn it,” I thought, “can’t we just focus for a few hours?” Other times the White House might be in the midst of responding to a national crisis, but a fly on the wall will find the president is far more interested in responding to “the haters” online than doing his job.
Calm leaders are able to let criticism wash over them. President Lincoln claimed to avoid reading personal attacks altogether. When he did encounter a particularly strong critique of his presidency, he would sit at his desk and compose a fiery refutation. After that, he would get up and walk away without sending it. That is not the Trump style. The president takes all criticism personally. He cannot imagine letting it go unanswered. Unlike Lincoln, he does not see temperance as a virtue. He hits “send.”
I still remember the gnawing ache in the pit of my stomach. The quiet tension. The sunken faces at work. We were zombies roaming the administration. No words had to be exchanged. The day we all knew was coming had arrived. The day that any remaining questions about President Donald J. Trump’s character were definitively answered. For some, it was a turning point. There are many episodes that capture Donald Trump’s character, but this one stands out in my memory.
On August 12, 2017, organizers of what was called a “Unite the Right” rally gathered to protest the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue from a park in Charlottesville, Virginia. That was their excuse for getting together, at least. They welcomed well-known white supremacist groups, including neo-Nazi and neo-Confederacy organizations as well as the Ku Klux Klan. The local media covered the lead-up to the rally extensively. On the previous evening, white supremacists conducted an unauthorized march through the University of Virginia campus, where they chanted, “Jews will not replace us,” “white lives matter,” and “blood and soil.” They were met by university students who had stood together around a statue of Thomas Jefferson to oppose the group. The encounter turned violent, only exacerbating the unease in the city before the larger event was scheduled to take place the next day.
A counterprotest to the “Unite the Right” rally was organized, representing a wide swath of religious, ethnic, and other interest groups, as well as concerned local citizens. Violent clashes again followed. In the afternoon, the scene turned deadly. A self-identified white supremacist from Ohio deliberately rammed his vehicle into a crowd of counterprotestors, sending bodies flying into the air. More than thirty people were reported injured, and one woman, Heather Heyer, was killed. The city declared a state of emergency. The crisis in Charlottesville became an international news story.
It is impossible to know exactly what information Donald Trump absorbed about this event, the first real test of his ability as president to respond to civil unrest in our country. He weighed in from his golf course in New Jersey, stating that there was “no place for this kind of violence in America.” That was not all. He condemned the hate and “the violence on many sides.”
On many sides.
What on earth did he mean by that, I thought, when he uttered the words. Trump seemed to suggest the counterprotestors were also to blame. He failed to specifically denounce the extremist groups. In fairness, I considered it was possible the president, like others, didn’t want to get ahead of the facts about the incident since we didn’t know who all of the victims were. I knew deep down, though, that the truth wasn’t good. He didn’t want to admit it because the violent group was a pro-MAGA crowd.
The bipartisan outcry was immediate. One of the president’s staunchest defenders on Capitol Hill, Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, joined a number of his colleagues in urging the president to clarify his remarks and condemn the hate groups by name. Meanwhile, white supremacists hailed Trump’s statement in their own publications, because they also saw it as a defense of their cause.
On Monday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions labeled the incident an “evil” act of domestic terrorism. White House staff frantically worked to get the president to approve a new statement to make clear he, too, was opposed to white supremacists and neo-Nazis. In the meantime, top CEOs began resigning from administration advisory councils in protest of the president’s ambivalence, including the heads of Under Armour, Intel, and Merck. Although he would later inform reporters that his first statement in Charlottesville’s violent aftermath was “beautiful,” the president yielded and gave a new public statement singling out the hate groups.
On Tuesday, it took a turn for the worse. During a press conference at New York’s Trump Tower meant to be about US infrastructure, the president went off on a rant about Charlottesville and seemed to cast aside the revised statements issued the day before. He condemned the vehicular homicide, but then he opined that the “Unite the Right” rally included some “very fine people” and that “the press has treated them absolutely unfairly.” The dazed, resigned look on Chief of Staff John Kelly’s face went viral; for good reason.
Those of us watching it live had to pick our jaws up off the floor. What was he talking about? It was hard for anyone to imagine “very fine people” innocently stumbling across a neo-Nazi rally that was widely publicized in advance. “Very fine people” seemed highly unlikely to join marchers who carried signs with swastikas and bellowed anti-Semitic slogans. David Duke and Richard Spencer, both well-known white supremacists, were not “very fine people.”
Trump did not stop there. He defended the alt-right demonstration, comparing the removal of the Confederate leader’s statue to bringing down those of the Founding Fathers. “This week, it is Robert E. Lee… I wonder, is it George Washington next? And is it Thomas Jefferson the week after? You know, you have to ask yourself, where does it stop?” He again blamed “both sides” for the violence, including the counterprotestors that he labeled the “alt-left.” “Do they have any semblance of guilt?” he asked. This was the real Trump speaking, not the scripted one.
Donald Trump has been accused of being a bigot; whether it is of conviction or convenience is debated. I personally have never believed the president is racist in his heart of hearts. But what difference does it make if the effect is the same? When he makes statements that encourage racists and knows full well he is doing so, it is wrong. More damning than that is his aloofness. The American public can see that the administration is not doing enough to counter racially motivated violence. Why is that? Because ultimately the man at the top doesn’t show interest. In the minds of Trump boosters, problems such as white supremacy are an invention of the Left to push an identity-politics agenda. As a result, the president is reluctant to act, hesitant to lead the charge on an issue that might alienate some of his supporters, all the while ignoring a deadly brushfire sweeping the hearts and minds of a small but menacing faction here at home.