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David French of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America address the horrific violence in Charlottesville over the weekend. David and Greg criticize President Trump’s failure to condemn the specific white supremacist and Neo-Nazi groups that led the marches and the connection of the man who committed the vehicular homicide– particularly when the president has a history of getting specific with other targets. They also groan as far too many on the right deflect from President Trump’s stumbles by pointing out egregious mistakes President Obama made along similar lines – mistakes the same people roundly condemned. And they ridicule the news media for grossly manipulating terrorism statistics to suggests right-wingers kill more Americans than Islamic radicals and for relying on the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center to decide who is a right-wing extremist.
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Published in: Culture, History, Humor, Islamist Terrorism, Journalism, Law, Policing, Politics, Religion & Philosophy
Here’s what’s disturbing to me: our press does not seem to understand what our federal government is or what the President’s job is. Where in the Constitution does it say the President has anything to do with local riots? Where does it say that he is responsible for local riots if he doesn’t deplore them properly? Why did Trump’s name even come up in this? If we had good journalists who cared about the United States as founded, his statement or lack thereof would be a footnote at best, because what the President says on this should not matter. If you cannot point to where this “crisis” matters in the Constitution, then as journalists, you ought to be explaining why it does not matter. Instead, you are supporting the Imperial Presidency. Step back and support our republic, gentlemen.
So the President condemned political violence, no matter the source, and he is wrong for having done so? What weak sauce from people who do not want to give the President any credit for anything he does. He wasn’t vague. The violence of BLM, Antifa and Neo-Nazis is all wrong.
They don’t care about the violence of BLM or Antifa.
Greg, David, I love your show, and I’m one of NRO’s strongest defenders, but you guys are not simply wrong, but reprehensible here. The President clearly condemned violence on all sides. To say otherwise is simply not true and feeds the narrative that the counter-protests, which consisted of two groups with a history of violence and anti-white bigotry, were innocent bystanders who bear no responsibility for what happened. These “counter protesters” are the same people who drove Charles Murray, Ben Shapiro, and Ann Coulter out of Berkeley. That they happen to have picked a less sympathetic target this time around changes nothing.
Good points all. But here is the thing, the people who died where the leftists and the terrorist car attack was done by an alt-right guy. The sides aren’t equal in this case. It reminds me of the moral equivalency the left has always treated the Israelis and the Palestinians as the same.
Henry’s right: if it were merely about condemning brawls, melees, set-tos, riots, donnybrooks, brou-ha-has, fracases, and other violent disagreement, a blanket statement about both sides would be sufficient.
But driving a car into a crowd is a homicidal act resulting in a fatality, and the party responsible for THAT behavior must be called out by name.
Apparently the president’s job is to emote and tell us how to feel about events, since we’re not capable of processing them ourselves without guidance from the federal government. And conservative useful-idiots insist that he respond exactly the way the MSM want him to.
Since Washington is obsessed with identity politics, we’re guaranteed to see a lot more of these kinds of identity-based clashes and I have no desire to see any president trying to figure out how to deliver a thread-the-needle statement designed not to offend those-who-must-not-be-offended (which is pretty much everyone involved). I thought Trump did an admirable job of trying to avoid the identity politics minefield, but commentators like French will have none of it.
And this is how we get more Trump. Thank you, David French, for being one of the guys who brought this on and your continuing support of the Trump phenomenon.
Come on, guys. Do you think Trump had all the facts, or perhaps maybe he waited for the facts so he couldn’t name specifics? I thought Trump’s initial response was perfectly fine. Sheesh.
The SPLC list of post 9/11 terrorists attacks left out the Beltway Sniper. This was in 2002 and John Mohammad did claim to be motivated by Jihadism. While he had additional motivations, he should be included in the radical Islamic column.
How did this get here? YETI!