Trump and the alt-right

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"Inadvertedly posted" hahaha

Trump's reelection campaign also released its first television advertisement over the weekend, in which it labeled Democrats and the media "enemies" of the president, accusing the left of "obstructing" Trump's agenda and the media of "attacking our president." "The president's enemies don't want him to succeed, but Americans are saying, 'Let President Trump do his job,'" the ad said.

On Monday evening, the president retweeted a prominent conspiracy theorist who tweeted about gun violence in Chicago. Trump quickly deleted the retweet. On Tuesday morning, in another attack that did not go unnoticed, Trump retweeted (and soon after deleted) a cartoon of a train hitting a person marked with the CNN logo. The image sparked accusations that the president was trivializing the death of Heather Heyer, the 32-year-old woman killed when the driver plowed through a crowd of counterprotesters in Charlottesville.
An anonymous White House representative said the tweets were "inadvertently posted."

Trump bashes anyone who criticizes him after calling for unity - Business Insider

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Why does this not surprise us..

A white supremacist website that was banned by both of its US-based web hosts earlier this week has found a new home for its server — Russia. The Daily Stormer was dropped by both GoDaddy and Google after its founder, white supremacist Andrew Anglin, published an article attacking the 32-year-old counterprotester who was run over by an alleged neo-Nazi in Charlottesville, Virginia on Saturday. 

Anglin wrote on Wednesday that his site was shut down "by the greasy Jews"  who said that he had incited terrorism by "making fun of a fat skank who had been run over by a car." He wrote, mockingly, that Trump "called his true friend," Russian President Vladimir Putin, to convince him to host The Daily Stormer on Russian servers.

Anglin has long espoused views sympathetic to the Kremlin, including support for pro-Russia Ukrainian separatists. The site's chief technology officer, Andrew Auernheimer — a blackhat hacker known as "weev" — currently lives in Ukraine and has called on its pro-western, anti-Putin president, Petro Poroshenko, to step down.

Neo-Nazi site Daily Stormer finds new home in Russia - Business Insider

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LOL

President Donald Trump’s remarks Tuesday on the protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, shocked a lot of Americans. But the comments probably wouldn’t have been surprising to anyone who watched Fox News in recent days. In the video above, Media Matters compared Trump’s comments with what Fox News pundits and guests said in the days before. Here are a few examples:

• Trump on getting the facts right: “I wanted to make sure, unlike most politicians, that what I said was correct — not make a quick statement. I want to know the facts.” Fox News host Jesse Watters: “Perhaps the president was thinking, ‘You know what, I don’t have all the facts.’”
  
• Trump on violence on “both sides”: “You had a group on one side that was bad, and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent. I think there’s blame on both sides, and I have no doubt about it.” Newt Gingrich on Fox News: “So we have a two-sided violence problem, not just a one-sided violence problem.”
  
• Trump on the alt-left: “What about the alt-left that came charging the, as you say, the alt-right?” Fox News host Sean Hannity: “Republicans need to do their job and also be ready to fight back, because you got the alt-left — they cannot stand this president.”
  
• Trump on Confederate statues coming down: “Was George Washington a slaveowner? So will George Washington now lose his status? Are we going to take down … statues to George Washington? How about Thomas Jefferson?” Fox News host Martha MacCallum: “You could make an argument for Thomas Jefferson and George Washington. Are you going to change the name of the Washington Monument?”
  

We know Trump watches Fox News a lot. According to the Washington Post, Trump watches cable news an average of five hours a day. In fact, some of Trump’s aides reportedly try to get on cable news just to communicate to Trump.

It sure looks like Trump’s Charlottesville talking points came straight from Fox News - Vox

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National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn is said to be deeply dismayed by President Trump's statements in the wake of the violence at a white supremacist demonstration in Charlottesville, Va. The New York Times White House correspondents Maggie Haberman and Glenn Thrush tweeted Tuesday that Cohn is upset with the president's comments over the past four days, but is not planning to leave the administration.

Gary Cohn ‘disgusted’ and ‘upset’ by Trump’s Charlottesville comments: report | TheHill

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Trump's business executive councils imploded because corporate CEOs realized it was ethically untenable to be associated with the president. Doesn't this apply even more to elected Republican officials, who are now members of a party whose leader wishes to associate them with at least some fraction of white-power marchers? Any step Graham takes to solidify the grip of the Republican Party in Washington is now a step to strengthen the pro-white supremacist leadership in the White House. If Republicans like Graham hate what Trump has done to the Republican Party, and they want to show they find it untenable to be associated with white supremacists, their only ethical option is to exit the party.

Republicans now have an ethical obligation to quit Trump's party - Business Insider

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Apparently the Republican Party is full off alt-righters, what a surprise..

Republicans on Capitol Hill rushed to disagree — directly or indirectly — with President Donald Trump’s comments on Charlottesville after his Tuesday press conference saying there was blame on "both sides." But Republican voters don’t seem too upset. According to a new CBS poll, 67 percent of Republicans approve of the way Trump handled the Charlottesville aftermath, while 82 percent of Democrats disapproved. Still, a majority of Americans — 55 percent — did not like Trump’s post-attack reactions.

Poll: 67% of Republicans agree with how Trump handled Charlottesville - Vox

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A White House adviser told Politico that while the majority of staffers called on the president to offer an unequivocal denunciation of neo-Nazis, in some ways Trump would "rather have people calling him racist than say he backed down the minute he was wrong" and that the comments may "turn into the biggest mess of his presidency because he is stubborn and doesn't realize how bad this is getting."

Advisers worry that the remarks may damage any attempt for Trump to spearhead a legislative agenda as Congress returns this fall. Congress needs to raise the debt ceiling by September 29 to keep the US from defaulting on its debt, and Republicans are hoping to pass a budget and tax reform before the end of the year. 

But while many White House employees have been disappointed by the president's remarks, Trump himself reportedly hasn't regretted his statements. According to the Times, Trump said he felt "liberated by his news conference," citing his comments as a "retort to the political establishment that he sees as trying to tame his impulses."

Trump's top advisers are 'despondent and numb' after Charlottesville - Business Insider

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After a relatively conventional response to the attack, in which he went on to Twitter to call on the people of Barcelona to be “tough and strong” and offer help from the US, he posted another, more cryptic, tweet, saying: “Study what General Pershing of the United States did to terrorists when caught. There was no more Radical Islamic Terror for 35 years!” 

What we know so far about the Barcelona terror attack Read more The tweet echoed a highly controversial claim Trump made at an election rally in South Carolina in February 2016, in which he talked admiringly about a counter-insurgency in the Philippines conducted by Gen John Pershing between 1909 and 1913, when he was governor of Moro province. “They were having terrorism problems just like we do,” Trump said. “And he caught 50 terrorists who did tremendous damage and killed many people. And he took the 50 terrorists, and he took 50 men, and he dipped 50 bullets in pig’s blood.” Advertisement He claimed that Pershing then “had his men load his rifles and he lined up the 50 people, and they shot 49 of those people. And the 50th person, he said, ‘You go back to your people and you tell them what happened.’” 

In 2016, Trump claimed such mass executions ended the Islamic insurgency for a quarter-century. “Twenty-five years, there wasn’t a problem,” he said. In his new tweet he revised that estimated upward to 35 years.

This account of Pershing’s actions has circulated on the internet since 2001 but historians say there is very little if any evidence to support it, and Trump was denounced for his support of mass killing aggravated by racist insults. But the outburst solidified his support among the US far right, and did nothing to impede his victory in the Republican primaries and then the election last November. Trump appears to have had domestic politics in mind when he sent out his tweet in response to the Barcelona attack.

Trump responds to Barcelona attack by reviving debunked myth | World news | The Guardian

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A liberated Bannon, but he doesn't understand economics, economic nationalism is a recipe for more pain on the working class, not less..

"In many ways, I think Steve will feel liberated. Free from the limitations of 'serving' or 'answering' to somebody," former Breitbart spokesman Kurt Bardella told Business Insider. "Now he will be able to operate openly and freely to inflict as much damage as he possibly can on the 'globalists' that remain in the Trump administration."

Bannon had famously clashed with the so-called "globalists" in the White House, including senior adviser Jared Kushner and economic adviser Gary Cohn, who Bannon frequently likened to Democrats. According to media reports, Bannon was widely disliked throughout the administration and therefore had few allies to lean on as the environment grew increasingly hostile to him.

Chief of Staff John Kelly reportedly did not understand what Bannon's role in the White House was, why he had a PR portfolio, or why he so consistently clashed with colleagues, Politico reported on Friday.

Bannon reportedly thinks the Trump administration is a 'sinking ship' and he now plans to 'go nuclear' - Business Insider

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Hmm..

The conservative publication Breitbart this weekend pushed back against being labeled "alt-right," after CNN host Don Lemon ripped the network as a "platform the alt-right." Stephen Bannon, founding member of the board for the online media company and now former White House chief strategist, also referred to Breitbart as "the platform for the alt-right" in a July 2016 interview with Mother Jones reporter Sarah Posner.

Reporter Tony Lee on Saturday defended the publication, citing a Harvard/MIT study that found Breitbart was not alt-right, and used an alternative quote from executive chairman Bannon explaining his own beliefs, which Lee argued has been taken out of context. .

Breitbart pushes back on ‘alt-right’ label | TheHill

I guess this was all a mistake, then? 

“We’re the platform for the alt-right,” Bannon told me proudly when I interviewed him at the Republican National Convention (RNC) in July. Though disavowed by every other major conservative news outlet, the alt-right has been Bannon’s target audience ever since he took over Breitbart News from its late founder, Andrew Breitbart, four years ago.

How Donald Trump’s New Campaign Chief Created an Online Haven for White Nationalists – Mother Jones