The Hate He Dares Not Speak Of<br />Let’s discard the fiction that President Trump wasn’t placating white supremacists by responding so weakly to the neo-Nazi violence<br />that killed Heather Heyer, a 32-year-old counterdemonstrator in Charlottesville, Va., on Saturday.<br />All day on Sunday, Mr. Trump remained silent, as H. R. McMaster, the national security adviser,<br />and Mike Pompeo, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, whose jobs are to understand and combat hate-based threats, covered for him on the television news shows.<br />Instead, he spoke of an “egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence that’s on many sides.”<br />Mr. Trump is alone in modern presidential history in his willingness to summon demons of bigotry and intolerance in service to himself.<br />He began his political career on a lie about President Barack Obama’s citizenship<br />and has failed to firmly condemn the words and deeds of white supremacists, neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klan leaders and other bigots who rallied behind him.<br />“We are going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump,” said Mr. Duke, whose support Mr. Trump has only reluctantly disavowed in the past.<br />“He didn’t attack us,” crowed The Daily Stormer, a white supremacist website, about Mr. Trump’s statement after the two days of racist demonstrations.<br />One aide not heard from was Steve Bannon, Mr. Trump’s chief strategist, whose nationalist theories<br />and Breitbart dog whistles helped summon the rage on display in Charlottesville<br />The police said a 20-year-old man, who participated in the long-planned protest against the removal of a statue of Robert<br />E. Lee, plowed his car into peaceful counterdemonstrators on Saturday, killing Ms. Heyer and injuring 19 others.
