If you want to impugn President Trump, just whisper Charlottesville. If a talk show panel is talking about the many accomplishments of the current administration, just say one word – Charlottesville. If for some reason people have forgotten that Trump is a racist, Anti-Semitic, misogynistic pig just invoke what the Left and the press cannot and will not let go – Charlottesville.
Just to refresh your memory, on August 11th and 12th of 2017, a group of people held a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, to help save a statue of Robert E. Lee from being torn down. If you remember, tearing down statues was the hot new fad of the Left (it seems they tired of that) even if they had no idea who was represented on the statue or what historical significance was represented. The rally was taken over by a group of Nazis who had a legal permit for the rally because this country used to protect the right of free speech, even for the most deplorable citizens of the country.
Liberals can go marching at the drop of a hat over any causes they feel are going to make them feel better about themselves at the time - even if they don’t have a grasp of the public policy issue which is the central purpose for that particular march. In this case, The Left was marching against the Left. Yes, liberals have been trying their darnedest to hang the Nazis on the Right since Hitler murdered six million Jews. But they were the National Socialist German Worker’s Party. But the Left always wants to rewrite history to make it in their favor.
Once the Left found out that Nazis were going to rally for something, protesters from their side just had to show up. And some good people did. But then right behind them were Antifa and their super violent friends – The Black Bloc. No one really talks about the Black Bloc because the press ignored them before and after the event. I was one of the few who wrote about them and how dangerous they were in April of 2017.
Trump - who was doing presidential things like holding meetings with staff, etc., when the violence broke out -- condemned the violence coming from both sides which just set the Left off because the press had suppressed any knowledge of Antifa and The Black Bloc and wanted to only talk about Nazis. The Left was horrified that anyone had a gun and that set them off on a tizzy.
They seemed to ignore the bats and pipes and rocks that The Black Bloc used to attack their advisories. Then a Nazi ran a car into a crowd and the Left had all the ammunition they needed to blame Trump for the dead and make this into a cause celebre.
At the time no one knew who started the melee. I read over 100 accounts of the violence, many from reporters at the event, but no one knew who threw the first punch or rock. Despite that, history is being rewritten to blame the Nazis, thus the Right, and thus Trump. A perfect example of that was a column by Doyle McManus, a very fine journalist for a very weak publication, the Los Angeles Times. In a year-end column he stated the Nazis started the violence. I wrote him and told him I could find no evidence that was the case. He wrote me back and stated “My assessment is based on the fact that the alt right groups showed up with guns, clubs, helmets and torches; marched at the University the night before without a permit; and acted in general as if they wanted violence to occur. If they had designed the demonstration to minimize violence—which is how most demonstrations are designed, and how most of them turn out—I think there would have been a different outcome. You’re free to disagree with my call, of course.” Otherwise, he had no evidence, just his assessment of the situation ignoring The Black Bloc showed up dressed for battle with weapons of violence.
Then there is the fact that he could not let the issue go because Trump was at fault. Trump did not say the right things in the right way after the event for the Press and thus the Left (but I repeat myself), so in a column where he was writing about his own situation of having the frequency of his columns cut by the LA Times, he invoked the ever present evil – Charlottesville - just to take a shot at Trump.
When Gary Cohn recently resigned from the Administration, there were layers of analysis, but few omitted he had ‘almost’ resigned over Charlottesville and how Trump had not properly addressed the issue. That is just one of the hundreds of examples that can be cited of whenever one wants to take a shot at Trump, just whisper Charlottesville.
Here is the simple fact: A group of deplorable people took over a march to save a statue making it impossible for any sane people to march to protest the taking down of a statue that President Ulysses S. Grant would have stated was a righteous thing. Though Robert E. Lee made the decision to fight for an unjust cause, his principled leadership ended that fight and saved untold thousands of lives after hundreds of thousands had been lost.
Those deplorable people (Nazis) would have had a peaceful march if a group of hooligans who opposed them had not gone out aching for violence, and violence they got. Then one idiot Nazi rammed a vehicle into a crowd killing an innocent person. If the violence had not started the entire march would have never been etched into our memories. Our president condemned the violence on both sides and was excoriated for it. He then said there were good people on both sides of the issue (a true statement) and Charlottesville became the catchall phrase for Trump being a hater of all things good and a Nazi sympathizer.
The Left through their allies in the press will be whispering about Charlottesville forever no matter what the facts were because they have created it in their mind that it is central to Trump’s evil manner. It just is not.