Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, talks with
Rachel Maddow about how Congress can do more than the bare minimum of
tweeting condemnation of racism to address the actual problem with
legislation.
Trump’s response to the Charlottesville aftermath is earning him scorn
from even his own party. Cenk Uygur, the host of The Young Turks, tells
you how the moment of truth is coming.
“(CNN)Republican lawmakers and administration aides found themselves
again Wednesday weighing the costs and benefits of remaining loyal to
President Donald Trump, whose equivocal statements about neo-Nazis and
white supremacists marked a dramatic shift in presidential rhetoric.
By
Wednesday afternoon, most appeared to have made their calculation:
deserting Trump now could only harm — and not help — their agendas or
political fortunes.
Republican leaders in Congress, including
House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell,
released statements affirming their disavowal of white supremacist
groups and neo-Nazis — but not explicitly condemning Trump, who said
Tuesday there were "very fine people" protesting in Charlottesville amid
the torch-bearing marchers.
Within the White House, Trump's
aides privately expressed indignation at the derailed news conference,
which unraveled on cable television Tuesday afternoon and has been
replayed endlessly since.
But they, too, stopped short of
declaring their consternation publicly, determined instead to remain
focused on their agenda and keep the President occupied.
Trump
himself has remained largely silent on the matter. But inside the
glassed-in confines of Trump Tower — where he remained inside for nearly
two days straight — the President was defiant in the wake of the
ensuing backlash, according to two people who visited the building on
Wednesday.”
In this ‘Dollemore Daily’ Jesse addresses Heather Heyer's memorial
service which wasn't attended by Donald Trump. Instead, he sent a
tweet... A stark juxtaposition against the actions of President Barack
Obama in the face of similar circumstances.
Roland Martin delivered a blistering commentary in response to Donald
Trump’s bizarre impromptu press conference where he doubled down on his
initial Charlottesville remarks.
Even without the violence and the tragedy, is there a lower moral
hurdle to clear than "Denounce the bastards wearing swastikas and
chanting Nazi slogans?"
And when an American citizen is killed by a terrorist in service of
one of history's most evil ideologies, is it really so much to ask of Trump, "Stand WITH us, AGAINST them?"
Apparently so.
To a nation mourning a terrorist attack, he offered neither healing
nor calm. Instead, he bragged about how well he did in the primary.
Bragged about the economy. Attacked the press. Whined. Aired old
grievances. Spit piss at John McCain for robbing him of a victory on
health care. Motherfucking boasted about owning a fucking winery in a
community still washing blood off the ground.
And all that is abominable enough.
But then he did all he could to give cover to the terrorist's
ideology. To lessen its evil. He stood at a podium adorned with the
Presidential seal, and suggested that those who opposed white supremacy
were equally as bad as those who killed in its name.
There were "very fine people" among the Nazis. The white
supremacists were the ones with the permit, so in a way, THEY have the
high ground. My God.
In his loathsome statements today, Donald Trump blamed Heather Heyer
for her own death. By standing in protest of these diseased
ideologies, Trump said, she was merely part of a regrettable morass
where everybody was a little bit right, and nobody was totally wrong.
Not even the Nazis.
Whether it's Bob Mueller dragging him out of the Oval in cuffs, or
the House GOP defensively impeaching him as his approval rating seeks
absolute zero, or H.R. McMaster slapping a straight-jacket on him before
he can order bombers to attack CNN headquarters, or even, if we
absolutely MUST wait so long, a deafening electoral avalanche in
November 2020, the day is surely coming when we will be push this
shit stain out of the People's House forever. As dark as this day is, we
WILL be rid of him.
And when he's gone, we must NEVER stop scrubbing his stink from our nation.
Every executive order will be reversed. However long it takes, we
will sandblast every molecule of his legacy from our government.
We'll rip every portrait off every wall.
Should anyone attempt to erect any monuments to this Blight on
Decency, know the sun will never set on a single one of them, we'll tear
them down so quick.
Should you break ground on a Presidential Library honoring this
indecent fuck, know that we'll salt the earth before we let you so much
as pour the foundation.
Should you slap his shitty little name on a battleship, future
generations will refuse to serve on it, and it will rust and sink,
forgotten and shunned.
We will hound Trump and Trumpism from our nation, however long it takes.
Three days after Charlottesville, Virginia, erupted into violence and racial unrest,
the family of Robert E. Lee is denouncing the white nationalist groups
who rallied and marched to preserve a statue of the long-dead Civil War
general.
"There's no place for that," Robert E. Lee V tells Newsweek,
referring to the white supremacist protesters who carried torches and
marched through Charlottesville on Friday. "There's no place for that
hate."
The statue of Lee,
which has stood in Charlottesville since 1924, is now at the center of a
racially charged conflict that has gripped the city and resulted in one woman's death. In February, the local city council decided to remove the statue from the park, noting that
for many people, such Confederate monuments are "painful reminders of
the violence and injustice of slavery and other harms of white supremacy
that are best removed from public spaces." In May, white supremacist
Richard Spencer organized a demonstration
in support of the monument, and on Friday evening, a large group of
torch-bearing white nationalist marchers descended on Charlottesville to
protest the decision to remove the statue.
Lee,
a great-great-grandson of the Confederate hero, and his sister, Tracy
Lee Crittenberger, issued a written statement on Tuesday condemning the
"hateful words and violent actions of white supremacists, the KKK or
neo-Nazis."
Then, Lee spoke with Newsweek by phone.
"We
don't believe in that whatsoever," Lee says. He is quick to defend his
ancestor's name: "Our belief is that General Lee would not tolerate that
sort of behavior either. His first thing to do after the Civil War was
to bring the Union back together, so we could become a more unified
country."
White supremacists gather under a statue of Robert E. Lee during a
rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, August 12. Lee's descendants have
denounced the violent actions that led to a counter-protester's death. Joshua Roberts/Reuters
The
general was a slave owner who led the Confederate Army of Northern
Virginia during the Civil War and who remains a folk hero throughout
much of the South.
"We don't want people to think that they can
hide behind Robert E. Lee's name and his life for these senseless acts
of violence that occurred on Saturday," Lee says.
The Lee heir says it would make sense to remove the embattled statue from public display and put it in a museum—a view shared by the great-great-grandson of Jefferson Davis.
"I
think that is absolutely an option, to move it to a museum and put it
in the proper historical context," Lee says. "Times were very different
then. We look at the institution of slavery, and it's absolutely
horrendous. Back then, times were just extremely different. We
understand that it's complicated in 2017, when you look back at that
period of time... If you want to put statues of General Lee or other
Confederate people in museums, that makes good sense."
Lee, who
works as a boys' athletic director at the Potomac School outside
Washington D.C., says that his family was raised to believe that his
great-great-grandfather "was fighting for his homeland of Virginia" and
not for the preservation of slavery.
Historians, though, typically
agree that the Confederate cause was "thoroughly identified with the
institution of slavery," to quote from Mississippi's own declaration
of secession. The Southern states that seceded were largely motivated by
a desire to continue owning and using black slaves as property. (Lee's
own personal views on slavery are commonly debated, though the general
did own slaves and, as The Atlantic notes, "raged against Republican efforts to enforce racial equality on the South.")
The debate over Confederate monuments has erupted in other cities such as New Orleans, where a statue of Jefferson Davis was recently removed, and Durham, where protesters tore down a Confederate monument on Monday evening.
For
the Lee family, the question of Confederate iconography is complicated
as their family name becomes a rallying point for white nationalists.
The younger Lee hopes that lawmakers and citizens in individual
communities will "talk it over and [decide] what makes best sense for
them in the times that we're living in today."
Lee declined to comment on Donald Trump's administration, nor on his erratic response to Charlottesville.
Here's the Lee family's statement in its entirety:
The
events of the past weekend in Charlottesville were a terrible tragedy
for America, for the state of Virginia and for us, the descendants of
General Robert E. Lee. Our family extends our deepest condolences to the
families who lost a loved one. We send our heartfelt sympathy to those
who were injured, and pray for their recovery.
General Lee's life
was about duty, honor and country. At the end of the Civil War, he
implored the nation to come together to heal our wounds and to move
forward to become a more unified nation. He never would have tolerated
the hateful words and violent actions of white supremacists, the KKK, or
Neo Nazis.
While the debate about how we memorialize figures from
our past continues, we the descendants of Robert E. Lee decry in the
strongest terms the misuse of his memory by those advancing a message of
intolerance and hate. We urge the nation’s leaders as well as local
citizens to engage in a civil, respectful and non-hateful conversation.
As
Americans and as human beings it is essential that we respect one
another and treat others as we ourselves wish to be treated. As General
Lee wrote in his diary, “the great duty of life is the promotion of the
happiness and welfare of our fellow man.”
Robert E. Lee V Great-great-grandson of General Robert E. Lee
Tracy Lee Crittenberger Great-great-granddaughter of General Robert E. Lee
1. If you are fighting to prevent a statue of Robert E. Lee from being taken down, you are, in fact, a white supremacist. Trump said today
of Charlottesville that there were "very fine people...in that group
that were there to protest the taking down, of to them, a very, very
important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to
another name." No, you are not a very fine person. You support the
Confederacy and slavery, which is what Robert E. Lee fought for. By
definition, you are not "very fine." This is not difficult.
2. Trump said, "It looked like they had some rough, bad people,
neo-Nazis, white nationalists, whatever you want to call ‘em. But you
had a lot of people in that group that were there to innocently protest
and very legally protest." If you march with neo-Nazis and chant racist
things with white nationalists, it doesn't matter how legal your protest
is. You are still a Nazi. You are still a white nationalist. And, legal
march or not, you should be scorned. Not scorning them is supporting
them.
3. Trump said, "Many of those people were there to protest the taking
down of the statue of Robert E. Lee. So this week, it’s Robert E. Lee, I
noticed that Stonewall Jackson’s coming down. I wonder, is it George
Washington next week? And is it Thomas Jefferson the week after. You
know, you really do have to ask yourself, where does it stop?" George
Washington and Thomas Jefferson were slaveowners. They also helped
create the United States which led to the freeing of the slaves. It's
complicated, and, yes, we should have a discussion of their place in our
understanding of history. Robert E. Lee was a slaveowner who, as I said
above, fought so that a country of seceded states could keep slaves.
The same goes for Stonewall Jackson. Lee and Jackson are not equal to
Washington and Jefferson just like Donald Trump is not worth a hair on
Abraham Lincoln's balls.
3a. Could we clone Lincoln from a hair on his balls? Just thinking out loud here.
4. In the same way, both sides of the Charlottesville conflict were not
equal, despite Trump's insistence that they were. Yes, there was
violence from the counter protesters, but nothing like the violence from
the "innocently" protesting racists, including, you know, murder. And,
not to get redundant here, but one side was Nazis. The other side was
against Nazis. To say "there is blame on both sides" is to say that
Nazis are the same as not-Nazis. If you cannot say that not-Nazis are
objectively better than Nazis, you have nothing useful to add to any
conversation.
5. Trump said that Friday night's tiki-torch protest
was done "very quietly." Many pictures from the event show white men
and a few white women yelling or chanting. It is patently false to say
it was quiet. And if they weren't chanting, they were making the Nazi salute, which is louder than just about any noise.
6. If I were John McCain, I'd be looking out for polonium in my tea.
When a McCain comment was brought up, Trump gritted his teeth and said,
"Senator McCain? Senator McCain. You mean the one that voted against
Obamacare? Who is Senator McCain? You mean Senator McCain who voted
against us getting good health care?" He sounded stabby. Also, if I were
John McCain, I'd think nothing of using my last year or so on earth to
destroy the dangerous man who mocked my imprisonment and torture.
6a. If anyone know who these supposed rational Republicans are, now
would be a good time for them to reveal themselves. Hopefully, the
denouncement are rolling in, or we're in deep, deep trouble.
7. Anyone who can watch that press conference and not think that we are
being led by a deranged, out-of-control racist is someone who will never
be convinced about Trump's unfitness for office. Which means we should
be seeing a New York Times article about those people in the next day or so.
7a. Obviously, everything Trump said yesterday was a lie, but we already realised that.
7b. We knew we were in scary territory with Trump. We are now living the
beginning of a dystopian TV series. It's up to us to make sure it's
canceled before it gets renewed for another season.
Bill Bunting doesn’t take kindly to white supremacy. Cenk Uygur, Ana
Kasparian, and Brett Erlich, hosts of The Young Turks, discuss. Tell us
what you think in the comment section below. http://www.tytnetwork.com/join
"Man Speaks Out Against White Nationalist Rally In Charlottesvlle VA: "We Was Not Born Hating"
During
the recent events from Charlottesville VA, Bill Bunting took to his
Facebook to speak on his disappointment and how the group does not
represent him.”
CNN’s Ana Navarro on Tuesday went off on Donald Trump, arguing if he
cannot stand for people of every color and creed, he “should not be
president.”
Navarro was speaking with former Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer and CNN’s Don
Lemon about the president’s incredible press conference, where he
equated neo-Nazi’s with the counter-protestors standing against bigotry
and white supremacism.
Brewer claimed Trump “took the bull by the
horns” Tuesday, arguing the real issue is the “relentless reporting and
this relentless attacking of him.”
“I thought his speech on
Saturday was fine,” Brewer said. “I thought the one on Monday was
terrific. I thought today he came forward and spoke from his heart.”
“No one ever talks about the left,” she later added, echoing Trump’s sentiment.
Documentary filmmaker Michael Moore on Wednesday didn’t mince words when
discussing Donald Trump’s free-wheeling press conference that equated
neo-Nazi’s with anti-fascist protestors, arguing that the president is a
racist—and so is anyone who supports him.
Moore told Don Lemon
that the first thing he did after Trump’s briefing at Trump Tower was
flip on CNN, where the host was delivering an emotional response to the
president’s rhetoric.
“It was very powerful,” Moore said of
Lemon’s speech. “You talk about African American kids who have to walk
in to a high school under name Robert E. Lee, a statue of a man who
wanted them dead or enslaved. I don’t want to hear this. I don’t want
any fellow American … to ever feel the way you describe how so many
black kids grow up in this country having to feel. This has to stop.”
“He
was elected by white America,” Moore said, later adding “they voted for
Trump because they were angry. They voted for Trump because they wanted
to throw a bomb into the system that hurt them.”
Moore said he believes white Americans have a right to be upset, but black Americans also have a right to be upset.
“[Black
Americans] don’t go to the polls and vote for the hater,” Moore said.
“Black Americans, by a large margin, vote for the person who doesn’t
hate, who’s trying to love.”
Moore explained that most white
people he’s spoken with insist they’re not racists, even if they
supported someone who may be. “If you vote for a racist, what are you
then?” Moore asked.
“Because it sure sounds like racism to me.”
Asked by Lemon if he believes Trump is a racist, Moore replied, unequivocally, yes.
“He’s
absolutely a racist,” Moore said. “He’s not as stupid as people want to
believe he is. He knows exactly what he’s doing, he knows the words to
use and I’m certain the 63 million people who voted for him actually—the
vast majority of them—love that press conference.”
Lemon
countered that Trump supporters might “take offense” to begin called
racists, prompting Moore to provide what Lemon called an “uncomfortable”
comparison.
“If you hold down the woman while the rapist is
raping her, but you didn’t rape her, are you a rapist?” Moore asked.
“Let’s cut the BS, let’s start speaking honestly. If you vote for a man
who says what he said today—that the white nationalists were the
victims, that he equated George Washington and Thomas Jefferson with
Robert E. Lee and said that the people there trying to stop the racism,
the anti-racism protesters, that they were the violent ones—it just went
so far.”
“That’s a very powerful and uncomfortable anecdote you
shared, and people will think you’re comparing Trump voters to rapists,”
Lemon said.
“Yeah, it’s uncomfortable, isn’t it?” Moore asked.
“Because enablers of immoral behavior, of criminal behavior… it is
absolutely criminal to stand behind the people that killed Heather
Heyer, that beat the heads in of people who were trying to speak their
minds in Charlottesville. If you are there, and if it you
participate—even though you’re not the actual person doing it—if you
helped to put Donald Trump in office, you need to think about this
before you kneel down and say your prayers tonight. Think about this
person that you now have leading this country.”
Lemon restated he found Moore’s comparison “uncomfortable.”
“Well,
it was uncomfortable watching this today, and anyone who supports
that—if you still support the racist, you are the racist,” Moore
replied. “That has to end. I’m not sorry. I’m not letting anybody off
the hook here. White people who voted for him.”
“America has to
stand up,” he continued. “We cannot any longer mealy-mouth about this.
Anybody who enables, anybody who votes for and supports a racist, is a
racist. You are culpable white America, I’m sorry. But there is
redemption for you.”
After intense pressure, Trump finally condemned white supremacists, but
he still has alt-right champions working in the White House right now.
Steve
Bannon is the White House Chief Strategist, who ran Breitbart which
proclaimed itself the home of the alt-right. Stephen Miller, who is the
Senior Advisor for policy, is reportedly the mentee of white nationalist
Richard Spencer. And Sebastian Gorka the deputy assistant to Trump wore
the medal of a Nazi organization to Trump's inauguration.
Jim Acosta on Tuesday went off on Donald Trump’s “strange, surreal
stunning and baffling” press conference, explaining the world witnessed
“a presidency go off the rails.”
“The president was trying to
have it both ways during this news conference,” Acosta said. “At one
point he said he likes to wait to see all the facts come in, he said he
did not know that David Duke was at that protest on Saturday in
Charlottesville, but at the same time he said later on—almost in the
same breath—that he was watching the events unfolding in
Charlottesville, ‘very closely.’”
“The other thing that he tried
to say at one point is that not all of the protesters in that white
supremacist, neo-Nazi crowd were bad people,” Acosta continued, noting
authorities would say the white supremacists were “very much responsible
for that violence and that unrest that unfolded.”
“Keep in mind
this is the same president who said that Barack Obama was not born in
this country and that Barack Obama wiretapped him here at Trump Tower
without any proof at all,” Acosta noted, referring to Trump’s assertion
that he wanted to be accurate in his statement after Charlottesville.
“So, for a president to come out here and say he likes to wait for the
facts to come in, the record reflects that he does not always do that,
and you could probably make the case that he does not very often wait
for the facts to come in.”
“This was the president I think
unguarded, unvarnished, unplugged,” Acosta continued. “These were the
real views of the president of the United States today. What we saw at
the White House yesterday where he came out with that very scripted
statement, that was not really the president of the United States deep
down inside.”
“Donald Trump made his true colors very clear here
inside of Trump tower and it felt like when you’re watching it here in
person, you’re not just seeing a press conference go off the rails or
jump the tracks, you are watching a presidency go off the rails and jump
the tracks. It was just that strange, surreal, stunning and baffling to
watch,” the CNN reporter concluded.
The Justice Department wants to know who’s visiting this anti-Trump
website. Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian, the hosts of The Young Turks,
break it down. Tell us what you think in the comment section below. https://tytnetwork.com/join/
“The
Department of Justice has requested information on visitors to a
website used to organize protests against President Trump, the Los
Angeles-based Dreamhost said in a blog post published on Monday.
Dreamhost,
a web hosting provider, said that it has been working with the
Department of Justice for several months on the request, which believes
goes too far under the Constitution.
DreamHost claimed that the
complying with the request from the Justice Department would amount to
handing over roughly 1.3 million visitor IP addresses to the government,
in addition to contact information, email content and photos of
thousands of visitors to the website, which was involved in organizing
protests against Trump on Inauguration Day.
“That information could
be used to identify any individuals who used this site to exercise and
express political speech protected under the Constitution’s First
Amendment,” DreamHost wrote in the blog post on Monday. “That should be
enough to set alarm bells off in anyone’s mind.”
When contacted,
the Justice Department directed The Hill to the U.S. attorney's office
in D.C. The U.S. attorney's office declined to comment but provided the
filings related to the case.
The company is currently challenging the request. A hearing on the matter is scheduled for Friday in Washington.”
Trump is losing support bigly. Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian, the hosts
of The Young Turks, break down the latest polls. Tell us what you think
in the comment section below. https://tytnetwork.com/join/
“There's trouble in Trumpland.
The
voters who backed Donald Trump like the disruption but are looking for
more function from the outsider they helped put in the White House,
members of the USA TODAY Network Trump Voter Panel say.
While
they still approve of the job President Trump is doing, the collapse of
the GOP's promise to repeal the Affordable Care Act has rattled some of
his loyalists. So have chaos in the White House staff and the public
humiliation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
"All the
bickering, fighting and firings take time away from solving all of our
problems," worried Joe Canino, 62, of Hebron, Ct.
"The caveat or
the pause there is, he's got to figure out a way to get more done
collaboratively with Capitol Hill," Barney Carter of St. Marys, Ga.,
said. "The Hill to me has the most to blame for it, but he's got to
figure out a way to solve that problem.”
Rep. Gwen Moore called for the removal of President Trump following his
comments about the violence in Charlottesville. House Speaker Paul Ryan
also tweeted his opposition of the president's remarks on Tuesday.
White supremacists gather under a statue of Robert E. Lee during a
rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, August 12. Lee's descendants have
denounced the violent actions that led to a counter-protester's death. Joshua Roberts/Reuters 
