Ever since Trump’s campaign found support from Pepe the Frog, observers have questioned what his motives might be regarding white supremacists, leaders with ties to the KKK, and nationalist provocateurs. Does he share these views, or is he just being savvy about working his base? Those questions have only intensified after the President’s lackluster attempts to comment on violence in Charlottesville. But Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel wants to state definitively, for the record, that the Grand Old Party wants no part of this Nazi business.
“We don’t want your vote, we don’t support you, we’ll speak out against you,” McDaniel told Nazis and white supremists in a Good Morning America interview on Wednesday. This is her first time commenting on the events in Charlottesville this past weekend, which resulted in the deaths of three people, one of whom was murdered when a man attending the Unite the Right rally drove his car into a crowd full of antifa and anti-racist protesters. She went on to refer to President Trump’s multiple responses to the Unite the Right demonstration and its aftermath:
“The president was saying that people brought violence from both sides. The blame lays squarely at the KKK, the white supremacists, the neo-Nazis who organized this rally, caused violence and are pushing hate across this country. This is not a Republican or Democrat issue. It’s going to take bipartisanship to bring people together around unifying this country and the president has called for that.”
McDaniel isn’t the only Republican to denounce white supremacists, Nazis, and neo-Confederates, or to criticize the President’s rhetoric. Marco Rubio said that Trump should have declared the events in Charlottesville as an incident of domestic terrorism. Jeb Bush, Senator Cory Gardner, Governor Mike Huckabee, and Sen. Orrin Hatch are all among the GOP leaders who have spoken up. John Kasich called Trump’s comments “pathetic.” Even Ivanka Trump spoke more strongly against Nazism than her father did.
Not only is his party backing away, top CEOs who have weathered no small amount of criticism for sitting down at the table with Trump have had enough and fled Trump’s executive councils this week, causing them to collapse this morning. Indeed, it looks like some of the only people not criticizing Trump are his administration, the most loyal members of his base and … those who showed up to Unite the Right.
(Via ABC)