Donald Trump’s Refusal To Place Blame On White Supremacists Hurts All Americans

When Donald Trump insists publicly twice that the blame for violence in Charlottesville must be placed on ‘both sides,’ he is giving very clear support to the Klu Klux Klan and Neo-Nazis. They know it.

There hasn’t been a president of the United States, since Woodrow Wilson, from 1913-1922, who publicly supported the racist Klu Klux Klan. Not until Donald Trump, who has refused twice to fully hold white supremacists, including Neo-Nazis and members of the KKK, responsible for the violent “Unite the Right” demonstrations in Charlottesville this past weekend, Aug. 11 and 12. One of those demonstrators is charged with ramming his car into a peaceful crowd protesting racism there, killing innocent Heather Heyer, 32, and injuring 19 people.

Despite the injuries and Heather’s death, Donald Trump has insisted on condemning “many sides” in Charlottesville. In fact, in his initial statement about the terrifying situation, he repeated “on many sides,” twice. Thousands of Americans, including the Mayor of Charlottesville and the Governor of Virginia have vehemently protested his comments, but Donald Trump has refused to place the blame squarely at the feet of the armed, torch-carrying white supremacists. In fact, he doubled down on insisting that Heather and the other peaceful demonstrators denouncing racism and anti-Semitic hate, were equally responsible.

“I do think there is blame on both sides,” he announced in the lobby of Manhattan’s Trump Tower on Tuesday, Aug. 15. “Yes, there is blame on both sides…you had some very bad people in that group (the white supremacist group). But you also had people who were very fine people on both sides…You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statue (of Robert E. Lee).” F.Y.I., Robert E. Lee was the commander of The Confederate Army of Northern Virginia in The American Civil War. Just let me remind you that the Confederate states were fighting to secede from the U.S. because they were determined to keep slavery in place.

Yes, slavery.

And after the Civil War, about 4,000,000 men, women, and child slaves were finally freed from their lives of horror. Memorials to slavery are nothing to be proud of for most Americans, but they are revered by white supremacists and Neo-Nazis, because these groups believe that people of color as well as Jews, are inferior to whites. They are fanatically convinced that the white “race” is superior to all others. These are the “very fine” people that Donald Trump is talking about. And they sure appreciated his support.

Former Klu Klux Klan leader David Duke enthused about Donald Trump’s support in a tweet. “Thank you President Trump for your honesty and courage to tell the truth about Charlottesville.” Another of those “fine people” who prominently led the “Unite The Right” rally was white supremacist Christopher Cantwell, who told Vice News Tonight that he carries a pistol and is “trying to make myself more capable of violence.” He insisted that the murder of Heather Heyes was “justified.” So why is Donald Trump sympathetic to white supremacists, who hate African-Americans and Jews?

First of all – they voted for him. As KKK leader David Duke 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. Because he said he’s going to take our country back.” But here’s another possible reason. He could be comfortable with the KKK and think they are “fine people” because his father, Fred Trump, was famously associated with the KKK. He was arrested at a march for the KKK on Memorial Day, 1927, in Queens NY, when he was 21. Donald Trump has denied this but it is a “fact” documented by multiple NYC newspapers at the time. It is not known if his father was actually a member, but at least one of the newspaper articles says that all those arrested were wearing white Klan attire.

In the following decades, his father Fred Trump was accused multiple times of refusing to rent apartments to African-Americans, including in a 1973 lawsuit filed by the US Dept. of Justice. The famous American folk singer-songwriter Woody Guthrie, author of “This Land is Your Land” even wrote a song for his landlord, Fred Trump, Donald’s dad, in which he accused him of racism. “I suppose, old Man Trump knows, just how much, racial hate, he stirred up, in the blood pot of human hearts, when he drowned, that color line, here at his, eighteen hundred family project.”

So, is Donald Trump supportive of the KKK and white supremacists because he grew up with a father who believed that the country could only be great again if it was whiter again? Most people alive today don’t realize that the Klu Klux Klan had HUGE political power and 4 million members in the early 1900’s through the 1930’s. Over 30,000 Klan members in their white hoods and robes marched in Washington, D.C. on Aug. 8, 1925, and the photos and videos are chilling.

Now, does Donald Trump dream of growing and harnessing the Klan as a huge political force supporting him once again? A political force that will keep him in power. He sure is proudly revealing himself to be a Confederacy supporter, tweeting today, Aug. 17: “Sad to see the history of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful [Confederate] statues and monuments…the beauty that is being taken out of our cities, towns and parks will be greatly missed and never be able to be completely replaced.”

Yes, missed only by white supremacists! The president’s sympathy for racists and racist symbols only divides our beautifully diverse country and celebrates the very worst in us, not the best.

Do you agree Hollywoodlifers? Does it scare you that Donald Trump supports Neo-Nazis and the KKK? Let me know.