Trump on Charlottesville: An Epic, Cowardly Fail

With white supremacists descending on Charlottesville, Va., today in an ugly "Unite the Right" rage that predictably turned violent, President Trump had an opportunity to unite all decent Americans and once and for all distance himself from all white supremacy.

Instead, Trump delivered a pathetic, feeble speech that didn't even mention the word white supremacist or even racism. He even had the audacity to suggest there were "many sides" to blame for the violence.

We already know that Trump is a smarmy, silver-spooned reality TV show host and pathological liar who brags about molesting women and is a bad and unethical businessman who defrauded thousands of students with his fake university and has bankrupted four or five of his businesses.

But today, he reached a new low. I never thought Trump was a true-red racist. But what he is, clearly, is a Machiavellian man-child who will say or do virtually anything to win favor. He simply did not possess the character or courage to do the right thing today.

And it's crystal clear why: He can't afford now to lose what little support he still has. Trump's only remaining loyal base are angry white males on the far fight -- some of whom are racists. God forbid he should alienate them by calling out the neo-Nazi protestors that wreaked violent havoc today and once again made our country look bad in the eyes of the world.

Not sure why I should be surprised by this. Two of Trump's closest advisors, Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller, are unapologetic racists. The engine that drove Trump's presidential campaign all the way to Pennsylvania Avenue and now drives his ugly presidency is in fact white nationalism.

It's an unabashedly anti-black, anti-muslim, anti-hispanic, anti-gay, anti-LGBT, anti-jew administration that frankly mirrors the motivations of the protestors in Virginia today. The evidence is overwhelming, in both the rhetoric and the actions. Just listen to and look at his speeches. They're filled with red meat for this hungry crowd.

More importantly, look at his policies. Virtually every act in the failing Trump regime has been anti-minority, and anti-poor. He wanted to decimate Medicaid, which would have been disastrous for millions of working-class and poor African Americans and Hispanics. Ironically, though, it would have also hurt millions of poor white people who voted for Trump.

The President also recently ordered Trump's cracker lapdog, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a known racist who once said the only thing he didn't like about a Klansman was that he smoked pot, to re-evaluate and potentially get rid of affirmative action.

Meanwhile, unlike Trump, Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe did the right thing, right away. At a press conference this afternoon in which he announced that three people had died in the violence, he delivered the unambiguous message to these haters that Trump just didn't have the stuffing to say.

Go home," McAuliffe said flatly. "You are not wanted in this great commonwealth. Shame on you."

This president should have said something like that. He doesn't shy away from calling out the North Korean president. But he won't go after evil in his own backyard.

Trump is a coward. A full-bird coward. His general, garden-variety condemnation of violence today was not enough. It wasn't even close to enough.

Trump declined to answer shouted questions about the white nationalists marching today in his name, or whether the car plowing into a peaceful counter-protest could be called terrorism. Of course it's terrorism. But you didn't hear Trump say it.

America is not blind. From the moment Trump officially entered the political arena, many of us saw with clear eyes that he was opportunistically ramping up the hate and fire of the alt-right.

Trump could have steered a new course today. But no. He doesn't have it in him. He has done nothing to improve race relations since he was elected. He has in fact made it safe for these white-or-fight scumbags to act out.

His plan from day one was to reach out to angry white male voters, to whip them into a frenzy by any means necessary -- including lying over and over and over about his opponents.

And now that he's got ‘em, he's not gonna let them go.

Because most Americans have widely already abandoned Trump's leaky boat.

The underlying but absurdly false message Trump has been trying to spread since he was elected is that that there is no more racism in America.

Graphically, tragically, today's events in Charlottesville prove otherwise. Racism is alive and well in this country, and the racists are feeding off this coward in the White House.