In video footage of the vehicular attack in Charlottesville, Virginia on Saturday, July 12, as the car was going in reverse, many of those nationalists were heard applauding James Alex Fields Jr's attack. Hours later, President Trump's statements created even more of a backlash when he condemned everyone involved on both sides, refusing to single out the white supremacist hate groups that incited and really, committed the attack.
Hate groups won't take responsibility for violence
Following the incident, two self-proclaimed nationalists -- one of them Matt Heimbach -- were shouting at their opposition in the streets and became the center of attention where they defended their rally and blamed the Left.
In an interview with PBS Newshour, Heimbach places all blame on the left as the ones who want to kill and denies any wrong doing, also refusing to take responsibility for the death of Heather Heyer.
An organizer for the rally also tried to also speak after the killing but was chased off and eventually escorted out of the area by police. Until the President came out to make a more formal speech last Monday and specifically denounce the neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and those specific hate groups, it was already the view -- and appropriately so -- that those groups had already been empowered by Donald Trump.
Hate groups praise President Trump
In fact, David Duke, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan -- a violent white supremacist group that has an extended history in the U.S.
-- said on video that they were there to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump. Without President Trump denouncing those groups, he had already made their case and David Duke had done the same.
After the President's formal statement, however, some of those who spoke for the white supremacist hate groups said that the point had already been made and that they knew which side President Trump was on.
They even said that with Trump having read a prepared speech, that he wasn't being serious about his denouncement. Whether this was the case or not, Trump's message to those groups was already being neutralized and not taken seriously.
Nazi-sympathizers outnumbered
By Tuesday, those groups would end up being empowered as expected.
This was because, rather than the President sticking to his official statement, he lashed out at the public during a press conference at Trump Tower and blamed the "alt left" for the same kind of violence. He also provided the white supremacist hate groups with cover in defending their stance against having Confederate monuments removed.
Rallies that are in the planning stages by those same hate groups are sure to gain more force while law enforcement reconsiders what their stance should be. It was reported that while there were riot police present at Charlottesville that they were not really involved in restoring order to the rally for which they are also being blamed for by both sides. Since Charlottesville, a larger rally of thousands of counter-protester descended on the city of Boston which severely outnumbered those who want to establish an equivalency between both sides.