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【衛報】極右集會：Trump譴責雙方同「非常暴力既極左」
2017-08-15 00:00:00[/size=2]
The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/15/donald-trump-press-conference-far-right-defends-charlottesville[/size=2][/center]
D[/size=6]onald Trump defended far-right protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Tuesday, insisting: “Not all of those people were neo-Nazis, not all of those people were white supremacists.”
He also condemned leftwing counter-protesters who came to the Virginia university town to challenge the far-right marchers.
The remarks – during a rowdy press conference in the lobby of Trump Tower – were the latest twist in three days of controversy since Trump first responded to Saturday’s events, in which Heather Heyer died after the white nationalist James Alex Fields Jr allegedly drove his car into a crowd.
Militia leaders who descended on Charlottesville condemn 'rightwing lunatics' Read more
Trump initially blamed violence “on many sides” before apparently reluctantly giving a statement on Monday denouncing racism as evil.
Speaking on Tuesday, he insisted that many of those protesting the removal of a statue in Charlottesville were simply “there to protest the taking down of the statue of Robert E Lee”.
Trump went on to equate Lee and his fellow Confederate general Stonewall Jackson with George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.
While all four men were slaveholders, neither Washington nor Jefferson ever rebelled against the US in an attempt to protect the institution of slavery from federal interference.
The president went on to repeatedly equate both protesters and counter-protesters: “I’m not putting anybody on a moral plane,” said Trump. “You had a group on one side and group on the other and they came at each other with clubs – there is another side, you can call them the left, that came violently attacking the other group.” Trump went on to say: “You had people that were very fine people on both sides.”
He also declined to attack the so-called “alt-right” and sparred with reporters about what he termed the “alt-left”. Trump insisted that reporters should define the “alt-right” to him and condemned the “alt-left” for “charging at people without a permit and they were very, very violent”. The president insisted to the assembled press that he knew more about the events in Charlottesville because he “had watched this very closely, much more closely than you people watched it”.
The president of the United States is now a neo-Nazi sympathiser | Richard Wolffe Read more
Trump added: “You had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists and the press has treated them absolutely unfairly.”
Trump did condemn Fields, the driver of the car, saying he “is a disgrace to himself his family and his country” and called him “a murderer”.
The president’s remarks were, according to senior aides who spoke anonymously to CNN and NBC, not planned and surprised members of his staff who had hoped he would stick to talking about infrastructure.
He also fired back at media criticism of his initial response to the violence in Charlottesville on Saturday, when he condemned “hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides” rather than explicitly calling out neo-Nazis and white supremacists. Trump insisted: “I wanted to make sure that what I said was correct, not make a quick statement. The statement I made on Saturday was a fine statement.”
The statement was widely criticized by lawmakers from both parties, including senior Republicans who were quick to describe the events as an act of domestic terrorism.
Trump, who insisted yesterday “before I make a statement I need the facts”, has long been prone to weighing in on breaking news events without the full information. In June, he condemned what he called “a terrorist attack” in the Philippines. The attack was actually a failed attempt to rob a casino in Manila.
In addition to his comments about Charlottesville, the president also weighed in on White House palace intrigue and seemed to throw into doubt the future of his top aide, Steve Bannon.
Kristin Donnelly (@kristindonnelly) John Kelly during the President's Q and A at Trump Tower pic.twitter.com/vxR3hTUqe3
Although he insisted Bannon was “not a racist” and “I like Mr Bannon, he’s a friend of mine”, Trump did not offer any guarantees of job security to the former editor of the Breitbart news organization. “We’ll see what happens,” Trump said about Bannon’s continued employment at the White House.
The event was initially intended to be an announcement of an executive order to speed the infrastructure permitting process. Trump stood flanked by the chair of the National Economic Council, Gary Cohn, and the treasury secretary, Steve Mnuchin, on one side and by the secretary of transportation, Elaine Chao, on the other. Both Cohn and Mnuchin are Jewish and Chao is Asian American. The new chief of staff, John Kelly, stood off to the side, where he was photographed with his arms defensively folded, holding his head down as he stared blankly at the floor.
The event sounded cacophonous as shouted questions and irritated answers bounced off the marbled foyer outside of the golden elevators of Trump Tower, the scene of many memorable remarks by Trump, including his campaign announcement on 16 June 2015, when he claimed the Mexican government was deliberately sending criminals and rapists into the United States.
Trump’s remarks on Tuesday met immediate criticism from both parties. Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, the most senior Republican on Capitol Hill, reprised remarks about his brother who died in the second world war.
“I was just eight years old when my older brother Jesse was killed in World War II,” Hatch wrote on Instagram. “As I said on Saturday, Jesse didn’t give his life fighting Hitler for Nazi ideas to go unchallenged here at home. I will never hesitate to speak out against hate – whenever and wherever I see it.”
Senator Marco Rubio of Florida also slammed Trump’s remarks. The former presidential candidate tweeted: “The organizers of events which inspired & led to #charlottesvilleterroristattack are 100% to blame for a number of reasons.” He went on to note: “Mr. President,you can’t allow #WhiteSupremacists to share only part of blame. They support idea which cost nation & world so much pain” and “the #WhiteSupremacy groups will see being assigned only 50% of blame as a win. We can not allow this old evil to be resurrected.”
The House speaker, Paul Ryan, weighed in on Twitter as well, but did not directly mention Trump’s comments: “We must be clear. White supremacy is repulsive. This bigotry is counter to all this country stands for. There can be no moral ambiguity.”
On the left, the Democratic senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii tweeted: “As a Jew, as an American, as a human, words cannot express my disgust and disappointment. This is not my President.”
Trump’s press conference did find praise from David Duke, the former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan who was one of the protesters in Charlottesville on Saturday. Duke tweeted : “Thank you President Trump for your honesty & courage to tell the truth about #Charlottesville & condemn the leftist terrorists in BLM/Antifa.”
At the site of Heyer’s death in downtown Charlottesville, mounds of flowers and chalked messages of remembrance now fan out on the road. A lone trumpeter played a somber tune, as word of Trump’s comments spread among those who had gathered to mourn. Rather than a sense of disappointment, many here had come to expect such divisive, off the cuff remarks.
Diane Townes, a 62-year-old African American working in education, said the comments were another example of Trump “shaming the victims”.
“Pouting and blaming is not the way to show an example to young people,” she said. “He opened the gateway to this with his own gestures during the campaign.”
Mike Townes, Diane’s son, had heard the comments on the radio minutes before arriving at the memorial site.
“I’m actually glad he’s saying it,” Townes said. “It is showing this country who he truly is. He represents the people who came to my community as supremacists. David Duke was right about him.”
Eric Gilchrist, another mourner at the memorial, said: “We know that he is selfish and vain, but now I worry he is a sociopath, too. He needs to leave office.”
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The Guardian
D[/size=6]onald Trump defended far-right protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Tuesday, insisting: “Not all of those people were neo-Nazis, not all of those people were white supremacists.”
He also condemned leftwing counter-protesters who came to the Virginia university town to challenge the far-right marchers.
The remarks – during a rowdy press conference in the lobby of Trump Tower – were the latest twist in three days of controversy since Trump first responded to Saturday’s events, in which Heather Heyer died after the white nationalist James Alex Fields Jr allegedly drove his car into a crowd.
Militia leaders who descended on Charlottesville condemn 'rightwing lunatics' Read more
Trump initially blamed violence “on many sides” before apparently reluctantly giving a statement on Monday denouncing racism as evil.
Speaking on Tuesday, he insisted that many of those protesting the removal of a statue in Charlottesville were simply “there to protest the taking down of the statue of Robert E Lee”.
Trump went on to equate Lee and his fellow Confederate general Stonewall Jackson with George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.
While all four men were slaveholders, neither Washington nor Jefferson ever rebelled against the US in an attempt to protect the institution of slavery from federal interference.
The president went on to repeatedly equate both protesters and counter-protesters: “I’m not putting anybody on a moral plane,” said Trump. “You had a group on one side and group on the other and they came at each other with clubs – there is another side, you can call them the left, that came violently attacking the other group.” Trump went on to say: “You had people that were very fine people on both sides.”
He also declined to attack the so-called “alt-right” and sparred with reporters about what he termed the “alt-left”. Trump insisted that reporters should define the “alt-right” to him and condemned the “alt-left” for “charging at people without a permit and they were very, very violent”. The president insisted to the assembled press that he knew more about the events in Charlottesville because he “had watched this very closely, much more closely than you people watched it”.
The president of the United States is now a neo-Nazi sympathiser | Richard Wolffe Read more
Trump added: “You had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists and the press has treated them absolutely unfairly.”
Trump did condemn Fields, the driver of the car, saying he “is a disgrace to himself his family and his country” and called him “a murderer”.
The president’s remarks were, according to senior aides who spoke anonymously to CNN and NBC, not planned and surprised members of his staff who had hoped he would stick to talking about infrastructure.
He also fired back at media criticism of his initial response to the violence in Charlottesville on Saturday, when he condemned “hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides” rather than explicitly calling out neo-Nazis and white supremacists. Trump insisted: “I wanted to make sure that what I said was correct, not make a quick statement. The statement I made on Saturday was a fine statement.”
The statement was widely criticized by lawmakers from both parties, including senior Republicans who were quick to describe the events as an act of domestic terrorism.
Trump, who insisted yesterday “before I make a statement I need the facts”, has long been prone to weighing in on breaking news events without the full information. In June, he condemned what he called “a terrorist attack” in the Philippines. The attack was actually a failed attempt to rob a casino in Manila.
In addition to his comments about Charlottesville, the president also weighed in on White House palace intrigue and seemed to throw into doubt the future of his top aide, Steve Bannon.
Kristin Donnelly (@kristindonnelly) John Kelly during the President's Q and A at Trump Tower pic.twitter.com/vxR3hTUqe3
Although he insisted Bannon was “not a racist” and “I like Mr Bannon, he’s a friend of mine”, Trump did not offer any guarantees of job security to the former editor of the Breitbart news organization. “We’ll see what happens,” Trump said about Bannon’s continued employment at the White House.
The event was initially intended to be an announcement of an executive order to speed the infrastructure permitting process. Trump stood flanked by the chair of the National Economic Council, Gary Cohn, and the treasury secretary, Steve Mnuchin, on one side and by the secretary of transportation, Elaine Chao, on the other. Both Cohn and Mnuchin are Jewish and Chao is Asian American. The new chief of staff, John Kelly, stood off to the side, where he was photographed with his arms defensively folded, holding his head down as he stared blankly at the floor.
The event sounded cacophonous as shouted questions and irritated answers bounced off the marbled foyer outside of the golden elevators of Trump Tower, the scene of many memorable remarks by Trump, including his campaign announcement on 16 June 2015, when he claimed the Mexican government was deliberately sending criminals and rapists into the United States.
Trump’s remarks on Tuesday met immediate criticism from both parties. Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, the most senior Republican on Capitol Hill, reprised remarks about his brother who died in the second world war.
“I was just eight years old when my older brother Jesse was killed in World War II,” Hatch wrote on Instagram. “As I said on Saturday, Jesse didn’t give his life fighting Hitler for Nazi ideas to go unchallenged here at home. I will never hesitate to speak out against hate – whenever and wherever I see it.”
Senator Marco Rubio of Florida also slammed Trump’s remarks. The former presidential candidate tweeted: “The organizers of events which inspired & led to #charlottesvilleterroristattack are 100% to blame for a number of reasons.” He went on to note: “Mr. President,you can’t allow #WhiteSupremacists to share only part of blame. They support idea which cost nation & world so much pain” and “the #WhiteSupremacy groups will see being assigned only 50% of blame as a win. We can not allow this old evil to be resurrected.”
The House speaker, Paul Ryan, weighed in on Twitter as well, but did not directly mention Trump’s comments: “We must be clear. White supremacy is repulsive. This bigotry is counter to all this country stands for. There can be no moral ambiguity.”
On the left, the Democratic senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii tweeted: “As a Jew, as an American, as a human, words cannot express my disgust and disappointment. This is not my President.”
Trump’s press conference did find praise from David Duke, the former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan who was one of the protesters in Charlottesville on Saturday. Duke tweeted : “Thank you President Trump for your honesty & courage to tell the truth about #Charlottesville & condemn the leftist terrorists in BLM/Antifa.”
At the site of Heyer’s death in downtown Charlottesville, mounds of flowers and chalked messages of remembrance now fan out on the road. A lone trumpeter played a somber tune, as word of Trump’s comments spread among those who had gathered to mourn. Rather than a sense of disappointment, many here had come to expect such divisive, off the cuff remarks.
Diane Townes, a 62-year-old African American working in education, said the comments were another example of Trump “shaming the victims”.
“Pouting and blaming is not the way to show an example to young people,” she said. “He opened the gateway to this with his own gestures during the campaign.”
Mike Townes, Diane’s son, had heard the comments on the radio minutes before arriving at the memorial site.
“I’m actually glad he’s saying it,” Townes said. “It is showing this country who he truly is. He represents the people who came to my community as supremacists. David Duke was right about him.”
Eric Gilchrist, another mourner at the memorial, said: “We know that he is selfish and vain, but now I worry he is a sociopath, too. He needs to leave office.”
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