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Comment by Proziam | Hacker News Reader

Just to add, here's the full clip - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmaZR8E12bs

I think everyone should watch this for themselves and decide whether the media's portrayal of what Trump said is reasonable and fair.

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You've linked to the second interview he gave about Charlottesville. In his first statements[1] in an interview on August 12th, 2017, he famously didn't condemn white supremacists who murdered someone, saying instead that he condemns "egregious displays of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides".

Then, several days later in the second interview[2] on August 15th that you linked to, he equates the violent white nationalists that murdered someone with what he calls the "alt-left", the purported group that the murder victim belonged to, saying that he thinks there is blame on both sides. After asking for further clarification, he says that there were fine people on both sides. Only after further questioning, and in a separate statement, does he condemn white supremacists.

People were criticizing him for his initial equivocation on August 12th, comparing the white supremacists who murdered a person to the victims of their violence, and the fact that he didn't name or condemn white supremacists. In fact, when journalists asked him to condemn them, he walked away from the interview. He refused to differentiate between the two.

Then, on August 15th, he defends his initial comments through his continued equivocations in the second interview.

It isn't unfair to criticize inappropriate equivocations, especially when it took him 4 days to muster out a condemnation, but still only after doubling down on the equivocations.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/08/12/tr...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/15/us/politics/trump-alt-lef...

I couldn't find the quote in your citation 1 so I looked it up.x

"...we're closely following the terrible events unfolding in Charolottesville, Virginia. We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence on many sides, on many sides."

https://youtu.be/CMQWJDVg8PA?t=48

It seems like that is condemning the white supremacist doing the murdering, among others.

It's even worse than how you phrased it. Trump brought up violence on "many sides" in response to pressure to condemn violence and intimidation from white supremacists. His suggestion that there is other violence was a quick "what about" argument that was supposed to argue in favor of his refusal to condemn white supremacists.

This is the video he posted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wibk3QsT7-M

This is not the Charlottesville event. This occurred several months afterwards. Nor were those white supremacists. In fact, they were old age pensioners taking part in a Trump rally at a retirement complex in Florida. Anti-Trump protestors arrived at the scene and began shouting angrily and abusively, using the terms 'racist' and 'Nazi.' At one point in the clip, a single individual sitting in a golf cart sarcastically retorted to that abuse in clear mockery of the barrage of over-the-top insults.

The BBC News article, while clearly biased against Trump, provides enough context to read between the lines.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53212685

Look at the comments you are responding to. He twisted the argument far away from my one-line statement. You succumbed to a classic tactic of racists.

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