With the media having already linked him to the New Zealand massacre, President Donald Trump was in a no-win situation when asked if he saw white nationalism as a rising threat.
This coming in the wake of the deadly terror attack at two mosques that killed at least 49 people, with the deranged gunman writing a manifesto that included a brief mention of Trump as “a symbol of renewed white identity.”
“I don’t really, I think it’s a small group of people that have very, very serious problems,” President Trump told the reporter in the Oval Office. “If you look at what happened in New Zealand, perhaps that’s the case. I don’t know enough about it yet.”
“Perhaps that’s the case,” followed by “I don’t know enough about it yet” not lost on the objective eye.
But anything short of full-on acceptance of the media-inspired narrative and a hair-on-fire condemnation was going to be seized on and that’s precisely what happened — never mind that when dealing with troubling incidents, an uneasy nation looks to the president as a source of calming reassurance.
Yet, claims that Trump was downplaying the “threat,” or minimizing it were rampant.
And in the face of all the attacks on the president over the remark, you have the anti-Trump network CNN broadcasting opinions that the white nationalist movement “is much more dangerous right now than the Islamic State.”
Though, considering ISIS is all but annihilated, it wouldn’t take much to surpass the terrorist group.
"What he was doing in New Zealand is trying to incite Americans to pick up arms against outsiders," says Robert Baer, a former CIA Operative, on the NZ attack and white nationalism. "This movement is much more dangerous right now than the Islamic State." https://t.co/HQ9KG2kRoB pic.twitter.com/8OwtT2wccm
— CNN (@CNN) March 16, 2019
And you can count on the politically motivated Southern Poverty Law Center, which has proven to be highly unreliable in making such claims, to jump in to say it saw a “50% increase in white nationalist hate groups.”
Reporter: "Do you see white nationalism as a rising threat around the world?"
Trump: "I don't really."
We saw a nearly 50% increase in white nationalist hate groups between 2017 and 2018. https://t.co/LMTb73Nxzt pic.twitter.com/8rVhQKHRfW
— Southern Poverty Law Center (@splcenter) March 15, 2019
This being the same SPLC that just fired its co-founder and former chief litigator amid “allegations of mistreatment, sexual harassment, gender discrimination, and racism.”
And notice the clever play on words from Al Jazeera, which cites the Ant-Defamation League to say there was “a 182% spike in U.S. white nationalist propaganda in 2018.”
Pres. Trump said he does not think there has been a rise in white nationalism, after the alleged New Zealand mosque shooter called him "a symbol of renewed white identity."
The Anti-Defamation League reports there was a 182% spike in U.S. white nationalist propaganda in 2018. pic.twitter.com/kxGCTrtiJ5
— AJ+ (@ajplus) March 15, 2019
White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said Friday the shooter was “wrong” in his single remark about Trump.
“He’s wrong. The shooter is an evil, hateful person. He’s wrong about that,” she told reporters at the White House.
She also called out the media for cherry-picking from the killer’s manifesto, which Trump said he had not seen.
The Trump-hating liberal media linked the president to white supremacy after the violent Charlottesville rally, when Trump said of the debate over Confederate statues that there are “some very fine people on both sides.”
The remark was manipulated to be an endorsement of the white supremacist group Unite the Right, which held a rally protesting the removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.
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Tom@bizpacreview.com
The longest-tenured writer at BizPac Review, Tom grew up in Maryland before moving to Central Florida as a young teen. It is in the Sunshine State that he honed both his passion for politics and his writing skills.
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