Listen to Trump's Actual Words Because He Did Not Defend Nazis

For a few hours, the commanding topic on Donald Trump's Charlottesville remarks was why he couldn't have delivered Monday's thorough, tone-appropriate condemnations of racists on Saturday.Then came Tuesday.In wide-ranging remarks that sent some TV analysts into conniptions, the president took advantage of having checked the box for rebuking the right villains, and explored some substrata of the Charlottesville controversy that raised eyebrows nationwide."He just equated Robert E. Lee and George Washington!" gasped one talking head. "He just defended the neo-Nazis!" blurted another.Except he did no such thing. Everyone is free to like or dislike what the president says; making stuff up is another matter.His main themes:· The violent left was on hand in Charlottesville as well, with the clear intent to react to the hate groups with a variety of weapons. This is a fact.· Alongside a throng of admitted racists, decent people can be found at protests seeking to prevent the erasure of Confederate monuments (a fact Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings would do well to realize as he cobbles together a "task force" to plot the fate of Dallas monuments. Wonder how that will go). · If the confederate monuments are obliterated, activists will not stop there. Get ready for attacks on imagery featuring any of history's slaveholders, from Sam Houston to Thomas Jefferson to George Washington. Anyone doubting this has not been paying attention to the wanton fervor of the revisionist left. On the day after hooligans in Durham, North Carolina, yanked down and defiled a Confederate monument, he said his favored policy on the fate of statues is to leave the matter to "a local town, community or federal government, depending on where it is located."   Continue reading...