Plan B Forum

Reporter : President, are you putting what you’re calling the alt-left and white supremacists on the same moral plane?

TRUMP: I am not putting anybody on a moral plane, what I’m saying is this: you had a group on one side and a group on the other, and they came at each other with clubs and it was vicious and horrible and it was a horrible thing to watch, but there is another side. There was a group on this side, you can call them the left. You’ve just called them the left, that came violently attacking the other group. So you can say what you want, but that’s the way it is.

REPORTER: You said there was hatred and violence on both sides?

TRUMP: I do think there is blame – yes, I think there is blame on both sides. You look at, you look at both sides. I think there’s blame on both sides, and I have no doubt about it, and you don’t have any doubt about it either. And, and, and, and if you reported it accurately, you would say.

REPORTER: The neo-Nazis started this thing. They showed up in Charlottesville.

TRUMP: Excuse me, they didn’t put themselves down as neo-Nazis, and you had some very bad people in that group. But you also had people that were very fine people on both sides. You had people in that group – excuse me, excuse me. I saw the same pictures as you did. You had 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.

TRUMP: Oh no, George Washington was a slave owner. Was George Washington a slave owner? So will George Washington now lose his status? Are we going to take down – excuse me. Are we going to take down, are we going to take down statues to George Washington? How about Thomas Jefferson? What do you think of Thomas Jefferson? You like him? Okay, good. Are we going to take down his statue? He was a major slave owner. Are we going to take down his statue? You know what? It’s fine, you’re changing history, you’re changing culture, and you had people – and I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally – but you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists, okay? And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly. Now, in the other group also, you had some fine people, but you also had troublemakers and you see them come with the black outfits and with the helmets and with the baseball bats – you had a lot of bad people in the other group too."

Here's the deal, if you were one of the "very fine people" whose only purpose there was to protest the removal of statues for whatever exalted principle you claim, and you find yourself marching beside people (not in this clip, but seen elsewhere) who are chanting "the Jews will not replace us", then you are not a "very fine person" if you chose to stay instead of getting the fuck out of Dodge.

Yes I think the adage is something like if you have 9 people sitting at a table and a Nazi walks up and sits down with them and nobody gets up to leave, you have 10 Nazis sitting at a table.

Or "show me your friends and I'll show you what you are".

The problem is political movements attract all kinds; I recall the increasing violence in the 60s antiwar movement and, while it eventually drove me away (after briefly flirting with embracing it), I didn't shy from demonstrations initially because some of those jerks were there. Likewise, I believe Martin Luther King embraced nonviolence, but we do know that a certain faction of those who participated in his demonstrations embraced it, and he (and most of his supporters) didn't stop demonstrating because of it.

If I really believed that the statues should not come down, I don't know if I'd leave a demonstration because the assholes showed up.

Big RR wrote: ↑

Wed Apr 23, 2025 1:44 pm

If I really believed that the statues should not come down, I don't know if I'd leave a demonstration because the assholes showed up.

If you're organizing a protest and the Nazis show up to support you, and you don't make it exceedingly clear you're telling them to GTFO, then you're an asshole Nazi too.

And I'm not even talking about the obvious problem that if you're organizing a protest and the Nazis show up to support you, you're on the wrong side of the argument to start with.

Monuments to treasonous Confederates have no place in American society. Their role in making war against the United States to preserve and expand barbarity isn't something to be celebrated. The "lost cause" narrative is a hoax promoted by the KKK and other racists to sanitize their own vile history and segregationist practices. It is the duty of every American to stamp out racists and Nazis at every opportunity.

Sue U wrote: ↑

Wed Apr 23, 2025 4:08 pm

It is the duty of every American to stamp out racists and Nazis at every opportunity.

Sue--I'm not arguing the issue of whether the statues should stay up or not, only saying that there are a number of reasons, valid or not, that people would think they should.

And while I agree we all should "stamp out racists and Nazis at every opportunity", I'm not about to let the nazis decide my position. For example, if the neo nazis broke with Trump and sought his removal (maybe because they wanted a more effective spokesman at the helm than this idiot), it wouldn't change my position on Trump. And if I went to a "Dump Trump" rally and some of them showed up, I would not stop exercising my right to protest my for position because they were there. Again going back to the antiwar protests of the 60s, there were some pretty dangerous people who came there and espoused views I wanted no part of, but I still went (at least until I lost faith in the belief the protests would be peaceful). Just because I was there does not mean I agreed with those positions.

Big RR wrote: ↑

Wed Apr 23, 2025 5:24 pm

And if I went to a "Dump Trump" rally and some of them showed up, I would not stop exercising my right to protest my for position because they were there. Again going back to the antiwar protests of the 60s, there were some pretty dangerous people who came there and espoused views I wanted no part of, but I still went (at least until I lost faith in the belief the protests would be peaceful). Just because I was there does not mean I agreed with those positions.

Regardless of a superficially common goal, having Nazis at your rally only serves to legitimize Nazis and de-legitimize your own movement. There is no common cause to be made with Nazis under any circumstance.

The people advocating for violence at anti-war protests in the 60s and 70s I just assumed were FBI agents. I don't think the Weather Underground or BLA ever showed up for protests by bourgeois liberals.

The people advocating for violence at anti-war protests in the 60s and 70s I just assumed were FBI agents

I'm sure some were, but we did see how some things became quite violent. There was a lot of anger, nad I recall brick/stone throwing and calls to burn it down--maybe FBI, maybe legitimate (and understandable) anger.

But I still don't think you should change your position because nazis share it (for whatever reason); otherwise, you are giving them a lot of power over what you can think or support. Should you just go home? Maybe, depending what they are doing--I see a big difference between a bunch of yahoos yelling "White Power" and people walking in nazi uniforms or klan robes. And I would keep my distance from any of them.

Yes but . . .

I'm a supporter of the ACLU.

Long ago the ACLU supported the Nazi marchers in Skokie Illinois. ACLU felt that the First Amendment protections extended to all including the vilest among us who wanted to spread their message in a very Jewish (over 50%) town.

Had I been ACLU at the time I probably would have recognized intellectually that they were right to defend Nazis, but would have been somewhere else on that day or maybe had to reorganize my sock drawer.

The ACLU didn't defend Nazis in the Skokie case, they defended the 1st Amendment. There was certainly no expectation that ACLU members should march with the Nazis.

Similarly the defense attorneys who represented Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer or any of the other despicable serial killers in our nation's history who went to trial weren't defending their actions, they were defending the Constitutional protections afforded every defendant by the Bill of Rights.

Those are the hardest jobs to have in the legal profession, because too many people confuse and conflate the issues.