By The New
York Times
President Trump dodged a question from the
moderator Chris Wallace about whether he would directly condemn violence by
white supremacist and militia groups at protests.
President
Trump refused to categorically denounce white supremacists on Tuesday night,
diverting a question about right-wing extremist violence in Charlottesville,
Va., and Portland, Ore., into an attack on “left-wing” protesters.
“Are you
willing tonight to condemn white supremacists and groups to say they need to
stand down and not add to the violence and number of the cities as we saw in
Kenosha and as we’ve seen in Portland?” Chris Wallace, the moderator, asked the
president.
“Sure. I’m
willing to do that,” said Mr. Trump, quickly adding, “Almost everything I see
is from the left wing. Not from the right wing.”
When Mr.
Wallace pressed on, the president asked, “What do you want to call them?”
“White
supremacists,” the moderator replied.
“Proud
Boys, stand back and standby,” he said, apparently addressing the far-right
group, then added: “But I’ll tell you what. I’ll tell you what. Somebody has to
do something about antifa and the left. This is not a right-wing problem. This
is left wing.”
Mr. Trump
highlighted left-wing violence when asked to condemn white supremacists,
despite racist extremists’ committing more lethal attacks in recent years.
Kenneth T. Cuccinelli, the acting deputy secretary at the Department of
Homeland Security, said days later that “when white supremacists act as
terrorists, more people per incident are killed.”
When Mr.
Wallace pointed out that Mr. Trump’s own F.B.I. director, Christopher A. Wray,
had said that antifa is an idea, not an organization, the president replied,
“You have to be kidding.” (The director also said this month that “racially
motivated violent extremism,” mostly from white supremacists, has made up a
majority of domestic terrorism threats.)
The
exchange came after a rambling discussion about law enforcement and protests.
Mr. Trump,
under fire for his handling of the coronavirus crisis, has tried to turn the
election — so far unsuccessfully — into a referendum on Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s
reaction to the protests and sporadic street violence that came after the
killing of George Floyd in police custody.
From the
earliest days of his presidency, Mr. Trump has repeated falsehoods about the
national murder rate and has seized upon outbreaks of violence in American
cities to make the case that Democrats are unfit to lead.
Mr. Biden
has tried to walk a narrow political line, expressing support for the aims of
peaceful protesters and the Black Lives Matter movement while repeatedly
expressing his disapproval of violence.
“Burning
down communities is not protest,” he said last month during a visit to Kenosha,
Wis., where Jacob Blake, a Black man, was shot multiple times by the police
with his children nearby.
Mr. Trump’s
strategy does not seem to be working beyond his base. Recent polls in
battleground states have shown that most voters view the protests as justified.
And a recent Quinnipiac University national survey of likely voters found that
only 35 percent felt Mr. Trump could make the country safer.
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