San Francisco Chronicle: Trump’s resounding silence on bigotry

On Monday, at long last, President Trump named “the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists” and other tiki-torch-brandishing dead-enders whose Robert E. Lee rally escalated to murder in Charlottesville, Va. “As I said on Saturday,” he declared, “we condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence.” The trouble is that Trump said no such thing on Saturday.

What Trump condemned Saturday was “hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides — on many sides,” which is another way of condemning no side. That it took him two days to correct this allowed German Chancellor Angela Merkel, among others, to beat him to it. So the head of the country that invented Nazism was quicker to condemn it than the president of the country that finally defeated it.

Tampa Bay Times: Trump missed chance to unite country against racism

Yet it took Trump two days to even approach such directness. He flew back to the White House Monday from a working vacation at his New Jersey golf club. In a clumsy appearance, after praising the stock market and job growth, he denounced the “racist violence” on Saturday and called out the KKK, neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups as “repugnant.” It was a hasty redo, woefully late and the absolute minimum the nation needed to hear.

Los Angeles Times: Trump’s first response to Charlottesville was tepid and mealy mouthed. His second was too late

Trump’s reluctance to acknowledge the dark stain of racism among some of his supporters is compounded by his inability ever to acknowledge that he is wrong. Even his more forceful statement Monday, in which he finally said the obvious — that racism is “evil” and that the Klan, white supremacists and other hate groups are criminals and thugs — was prefaced by so much throat-clearing and self-congratulations that he seemed more concerned about appearing to admit failure to lead than to actually lead.

Morehead News: Are Trump’s chickens coming home to roost?

President Donald Trump openly embraced the white nationalist movement during his campaign for the White House, including endorsing violence against protesters at his rallies.

He hired Steve Bannon, a leader of that movement, as a senior advisor. Bannon is the former publisher of Breitbart News, which claims to be the voice of white nationalism.

At press time Monday afternoon, Trump had yet to personally denounce white nationalism – which we feel is simply another term for white supremacy – as a result of Saturday’s deadly violence in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Hartford Courant: The Wink-And-Nod President

The nation needed to hear a clear condemnation of the neo-Nazi and Ku Klux Klan sympathizers who waved swastikas and Confederate flags and incited deadly violence over the weekend. Mr. Trump instead gave them a wink and a nod. He cravenly spoke of hatred “on many sides, on many sides” — as if the torch-bearing, epithet-spewing white nationalists in Charlottesville were no more deplorable than the people protesting them.

Syracuse Post-Standard: No equivalence between a group that hates and a group that protests hate

Days later, he sought to repair what did not roll off his tongue so easily Saturday. For many, us included, this suggested an orchestration Monday to try and make right what was obviously so wrong. It should have been easy to condemn those spewing hatred and vitriol against other humans merely because of their skin color or ancestry. Not because they didn’t have the right to speak, but because there is an obligation to protect our equality as Americans.

This president has not been slow in voicing clear criticism – or in taking police actions when they fit his philosophies. Just witness, ICE raids and removals of illegal immigrants.

Delaware News Journal: America’s version of ISIS is just as horrifying

But, whether or not by design, President Trump has given hate groups an advocate not seen in the White House since Andrew Johnson.

Before you call Trump’s endorsement of hate tacit, re-watch campaign rallies in which he overtly cheered on hateful chants.

Akron Beacon Journal: Expectations of a president

On Saturday, the president condemned the “hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides.” In doing so, he suggested a moral equivalence, that those protesting against the white supremacists were equally responsible for the horrible events. The Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website, applauded the president’s words, noting that “he didn’t attack us” in any specific way.

Such are the dog whistles the candidate and now president has deployed to the white fringes of his support. The wish has been that as president, he would learn, and not just to take more care in getting the tone and approach right the first time but in rising to the moment as the leader of the whole.

Greenfield Recorder: Trump continues to divide country

The message sounded clearly in Northampton and scores of other communities across the country during the weekend: there is no place in America for the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis and other white supremacist groups that spew hatred and breed violence.

Unconscionably, it took President Donald Trump until Monday afternoon — two days after the tragedy in Virginia and only after intense criticism of his previous tepid remarks — to explicitly condemn those groups as “repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.”

Asheville Citizen-Times: With or without leadership, we must all call evil what it is

Among the most chilling and illuminating responses to the President’s words came from The Daily Stormer, a white supremacist website.

“He didn’t attack us,” the website claimed, about Mr. Trump’s statement after two days of racist demonstrations. “Refused to answer a question about White Nationalists supporting him. No condemnation at all. When asked to condemn, he just walked out of the room. Really, really good. God bless him.”

It is a time for bold repudiation, specific denunciation of hate groups and a strong message that will not allow hate to spread its evil seed. It is the absolute least we can do now.

Colorado Springs Gazette: More than troubled by President Trump’s muddled response to Charlottesville terrorist attack

Going forward, we hope Trump will consistently and swiftly denounce acts and expressions of racism with vitriol no less clear and specific than what he has rightly directed at Islamic terrorists and other threats to peace.

To make America great again, the president cannot be vague or late in condemnations of prejudice, bigotry and other forms of irrational hate.

Los Angeles Times: Trump bears some responsibility for the racism on display in Charlottesville

Trump, to his detriment, has emboldened this rise. He missed a sterling opportunity to strike a different, more presidential, note Saturday with a milquetoast condemnation that failed to call out the racism that propelled Friday’s march and Saturday’s violence. We are a nation increasingly divided politically, economically and ethnically, divisions he has exploited and thus helped exacerbate. The weekend’s skirmishes and utterances ring of 1930s Berlin — though the nation is far from descending into fascism — and the 1950s desegregation battles across the South. They also mark a failure of political discourse and the political system, which is supposed to mediate our political differences, not accentuate them.

Kokomo Tribune: Trump fails to call out Nazis

This isn’t hard, Mr. President. Nazis are bad. You can say it.

Dallas Morning News: Amid the violence in Virginia, President Trump failed in a test of leadership

The country needed to hear the president specifically condemn white supremacists and make clear to them that while they have a First Amendment right to express their views, their hatred and bigotry run counter to the values of the United States. There will be no toleration of violence.

On Saturday, President Trump failed his country.

Central Jersey Courier News: Trump won’t rile alt-right

Trump is right about one thing: The bigotry underlying Saturday’s violence has been a stain on this country for a very long time. But Trump’s campaign and his presidential actions to date have empowered white supremacists — or white nationalists, if you prefer that euphemism — to a degree they haven’t felt for decades. That’s dangerous, and it’s part of the Trump package, something all of his supporters need to recognize.

Spokane Spokesman-Review: Trump must clearly condemn white supremacists

Many white supremacists believe they have support in the White House. True or false, Trump hasn’t done much to dissuade that belief. When mosques are attacked, the president says nothing. When a Muslim attacks, he is quick to comment. White supremacists liked it when Trump promoted “birtherism” against President Barack Obama, and when he highlighted the Mexican heritage of a judge who ruled against him in an immigration case. White nationalists believe they have allies in the White House in Stephen Bannon, Stephen Miller and Sebastian Gorka.

If racists are getting the wrong idea, then the president should set them straight. Some rhetorical fire and fury against white supremacy would be a good start.

Boston Globe: The terrorists Trump is afraid to name

Long before Trump, his Republican Party has maintained a sick alliance with white racism, courting racist voters with coded appeals to prejudice. Trump’s accomplishment, if you can call it that, is to force that relationship out into the open. The wink-and-nod relationship is no longer tenable. The GOP controls both the White House and Congress as the tide of extremism grows. Responsibility for countering it is theirs. Either Trump and the Republican Congress turn on their supporters now, and fight back against this surge of hate in words, actions, and policies, or they let it engulf their party, and their country.