President Trump reportedly returned to Washington D.C. last Monday, specifically to sign an executive memorandum that intends to investigate China over the theft of U.S. intellectual property rights. Many have seen similar efforts by the administration to use trade policy as a way to pressure China on North Korea.
Due to the violence that took place over the weekend in Charlottesville, Virginia, where white nationalists and associated hate groups led an attack on counter-protesters that killed two police officers, one civilian and injured many, he was forced to make an official statement to condemn those groups directly on the same day.
Delayed response, vague statement
The President had been on vacation at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey when the violence broke out last Saturday afternoon. But it took hours before he made his initial statement to denounce those who instigated the death of one of the counter-protesters, 32-year-old Heather Heyer. His initial statement was even controversial because he blamed all sides for the violence and in doing so made an equivalency of everyone else being similar to those Nazi hate groups.
During the President's initial statement, he took no questions and walked out of the room as reporters were shouting their questions at him. As he was leaving, he appeared to react to one question about him denouncing white nationalists and shook his head in irritation.
Donald Trump's agenda has fueled hate groups to target minorities since he announced his candidacy when he said that Mexico's immigrants were criminals and rapists.
Trump goes public with racist campaign
His influence for such hate groups was spurred on years before he announced his candidacy in 2015 when he brought then-President Obama's birtherism into the mainstream.
The right-wing created conspiracy theory said that the former President was not born in the United States suggesting that he was not qualified to be President. He continued to push this until he was forced to admit that Barack Obama was indeed born in the U.S. in 2016.
Moments Trump was forced to make statements
That he finally and publicly had to submit to this fact was only the beginning of a pattern where he was forced to make official statements to denounce certain incidents.
As the 2016 Presidential Campaign was winding down a lewd and misogynist recording of Trump from 2005 was released. Trump was forced to make a statement to "apologize" for the incident where he spent more time blaming and deflecting to his rival. During the early months of his presidency, Trump was also forced to make a statement to denounce hate groups after touring the National Museum of African American History & Culture in D.C.
During the time, there had been reports of Jewish cemeteries and community centers being targeted and vandalized with demands that the President make a statement. The American people, lawmakers and some of them were even his supporters expressed outrage over the fact that the President did not denounce those white supremacist hate groups.
That Trump's wife Melania denounced the violence in general also did not go unnoticed.
Our country encourages freedom of speech, but let's communicate w/o hate in our hearts. No good comes from violence. #Charlottesville
— Melania Trump (@FLOTUS) August 12, 2017
His Vice-President Mike Pence was more specific -- although still pinning the violence equally on counter-protesters -- and when President Trump's Attorney General Jeff Sessions was interviewed about it on CBS News where he supported Trump's statements but went further with calling out the hate groups by name. In the CBS news clip during his interview, anchor David Muir shows a clip where the President said during a debate last year that those groups should be called out by name.
After his formal statement on Monday, however, the President gave another cringe-worthy "performance" on Tuesday where he again blamed all sides, painting the counter-protesters as being just as bad as the Nazi-sympathizers. Here is the brief interview with Sessions on CBS News before Trump made his statement on Monday.