Fox News contributor Charles Krauthammer lowered the boom on Donald Trump’s now-infamous third response to the Charlottesville neo-Nazi rally. While he was at it, Krauthammer also called out what he thought was insufficient condemnation from colleague Laura Ingraham.
On Tuesday’s Special Report, Ingraham was full of praise for the substance of Trump’s widely-reviled comments. She called his first statement, on Saturday, “really, really good.” She thought “he could have been more specific,” meaning, he could have specifically condemned white supremacy and neo-Nazis. But she thought he made up for it in his second statement, on Monday, “when he said we must love each other, show affection for each other, unite together and condemn the hatred bigotry of the violence that we saw. That was so great yesterday.”
Ingraham’s criticism of Trump was that he sounded more like a pundit and not enough like a president.
INGRAHAM: People want to see a calm president in a storm. … There was violence on both sides in that event on Saturday. Anyone who watched the video could see it. But he’s not there to win every point. He’s there to calmly guide the nation through what at the moment is a very troubled time … I think he got caught in kind of the pundit trap, like he became a pundit.
Krauthammer wasn’t having any of that. He said that to critique Trump’s comments as having distracted from his agenda or as a tactical mistake “is a copout.” He added, “What Trump did today (Tuesday) was a moral disgrace.”
Krauthammer continued by calling Trump’s Monday remarks “a hostage tape” in which he spoke on behalf of his aides, not himself. Trump’s tirade earlier that day, on Tuesday, was the real thing.
Krauthammer explained what he thought was the “moral disgrace.”
KRAUTHAMMER: What Trump is missing here is the uniqueness of white supremacy, KKK and Nazism. Yes, there were bad guys on both sides. That’s not the point. This was instigated, instituted, the riot began over a Nazi riot, a Nazi rally, and the only killing here occurred by one of the pro-Nazi, pro-KKK people.
Ingraham bristled at being told her comments were a “copout.” “Getting caught in the trap of the left, which is what the media wants us to do, is not going to help a single black person get a job, a single Hispanic person have a better life,” she sneered.
Ingraham went on to validate Trump’s “both sidesism” by saying, “We have to be honest about the evil of racism and also honest about the evil of a far-left that is trying to tear down both history and intimidate free speech in the country.”
Ingraham also praised Trump’s statement condemning white supremacists, saying it was “clear and strong, and it was compassionate.”
“That’s not what’s in his heart,” Krauthammer shot back.
Watch the debate below, from the August 15, 2017 Special Report.
(Transcript excerpts via Fox News.com)
Eight historians who were called in to examine that claim during the 2016 campaign agreed that there was no evidence of anything of the sort having actually happened.
Although the events in Spain are monopolising air time on CNN “à la FNC”, I’m happy to note that they’re not allowing this to be a total distraction.
Am really sad, today, mainly because of the terrible events in Spain but also because those events have taken the pressure off the President. CNN has gone totally “foxy-like” in covering practically only those events. Am anxious to see whether or not they’ll resume keeping the President’s feet to the fire after the respite.
Significant to me to see that President Trump is indeed capable of saying the right things: that’s what I he did in commenting on the Barcelona events. However, I’m pretty convinced that’s only because the police said almost immediately that the perps were Muslim. Had they been anything else as at Charlottesville, he’d have waited for the facts, wouldn’t he?
