“If you look at what I said you will see that that question was answered perfectly,” Trump told reporters on the White House lawn ahead of a trip to Indianapolis to speak at the National Rifle Association’s annual meeting. “I was talking about people that went because they felt very strongly about the monument to Robert E. Lee, a great general.”This is an illustration of how neo-Confederate/Lost Cause pseudohistory and ideology is very much a part of the worldview projected by today's Trumpified, white nationalist Republican Party.
The president has received repeated criticism from those arguing he offered moral equivalence between the white supremacists and neo-Nazis who incited the rally and those who protested against them. In the days following the deadly protests, Trump did not denounce the marchers, instead condemning violence on both sides and calling for Americans to “come together.”
Here is Trump, who probably couldn't tell you in what century Lee lived, Trump Defends His 2017 Charlottesville Response, Praises Robert E. Lee TicToc by Bloomberg 04/26/2019. The Charlottesville comment comes just after 2:30.
He comically claims just after 1:10, "I'm a student of history." He also claims "I'm a young, vibrant man."
The reporter that asked the Charlottesville question didn't directly mention Joe Biden's reference to Trump's comment about Charlottesville in his video Thursday formally announcing his Presidential campaign. But Biden - who has some shaky history on civil rights himself - did raise it in that video. And good for him for doing so. This is an MSNBC report with commentary on Trump's doubling-down on neo-Nazis being "very fine people", President Donald Trump Makes His Own Argument On Charlottesville Worse Deadline 04/26/2019:
It's worth noting here that in his last Presidential run, Biden couldn't resist a touch of neo-Confederate type talk himself (Xuan Thai and Ted Barrett, Biden's description of Obama draws scrutiny CNN 02/09/2007):
In a June 2006 appearance in New Hampshire, the senator [Biden] commented on the growth of the Indian-American population in Delaware by saying, "You cannot go into a 7-11 or a Dunkin' Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. Oh, I'm not joking."When pundits talk about Biden being gaffe-prone, this is what they mean. His glad-handing, respond-to-the-crowd-in-front-of-you style is appealing and makes him come across as likable.
Two months later, responding to a question in an August interview on Fox News Sunday, Biden was asked how a "Northeast liberal" could compete against more conservative southern candidates.
"Better than everybody else. You don't know my state. My state was a slave state. My state is a border state. My state is the eighth largest black population in the country. My state is anything from a northeast liberal state," Biden said.
He repeated the comment during a visit to South Carolina in December 2006 at an event before the Columbia Rotary Club, according to a story published in The State newspaper. The State reported that Biden referred to Delaware as a "slave state that fought beside the North. That's only because we couldn't figure out how to get to the South. There were a couple of states in the way." [my emphasis]
But when he goes with the flow in that way, he sometimes lets out some blunders. I heard Biden speak live at the Netroots Nation conference in Detroit in 2014, and that likability aspect was very evident. VP Joe Biden speaks about Marriage Equality at Netroots Nation:
But just after 13:40, he begins an impassioned portion denouncing physical abuse of women, using the somewhat old-fashioned euphemism of a man raising his hand against a woman, i.e., calling it a "cardinal sin" and declaring. "No man has a right to raise his hand to a woman for whatever reason." He continued in a peroration, "No man has a right to raise a hand to a woman under any circumstances" and completed the sentence "except self-defense. Period."
It didn't come off though he was making excuses for domestic violence. On the contrary. But it also sounded really awkward and did distract from his attempt to unequivocally condemn it.
And I think his reliance on the metaphor (or I guess it's technically a synecdoche) of a man "raising his hand against a woman" was part of the problem. It probably occurred to him or his speechwriter that he needed to make the statement a bit more generic, because domestic violence happens in same-sex couples and involves not just spouses but children, as well. And, yes, men are sometimes also victims of violence initiated by a female spouse or partner, though the inverse is obviously far more often the case. If he had framed the speech in terms of "domestic violence" and violence against "partners," he could have avoided the awkward moment. And in a speech like that, he would have buried his point if he tried to put in all the variations I mention in this paragraph.
But that's Biden. I don't know if his Delaware-was-a-slave-state gaffe in 2006 was a similar case of his trying to duck the neo-Confederate issue by being humorous, or if it was a line he's been using for years to signal that he agreed with segregationists on some things like court-ordered busing for desegregating schools. Either way, it's a reminder of how broadly Lost Cause talking points have affected the US political vocabulary.
