When a president goes to visit the scene of a tragedy, it’s typically a moment to focus attention on the victims and on the causes. Donald Trump is a different sort of president, and as he left the White House this morning ahead of visits to El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, he made sure the focus was, instead, on himself and his political foes.
“Whether it’s white supremacy, whether it’s any other kind of supremacy, whether it’s antifa, whether it’s any group of hate, I am very concerned about it,” Trump said. “And I’ll do something about it.”
In other words, to paraphrase the president’s reaction to white-supremacist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, two years ago this month, there are some very bad people on both sides. This is a bravura performance in missing the point—either intentionally or not. As he goes to visit the city where a racist attacker killed 22 people, Trump cannot keep focused on the ideology that led the man to kill. Instead, he’s engaging in whataboutism, and he and his allies are creating false equivalences that distract from the point.
J. M. Berger: The strategy of violent white supremacy is evolving
When Trump spoke on Monday, he offered a perfunctory condemnation of “racism, bigotry, and white supremacy,” then quickly moved on to a slew of other issues—the internet, violent video games, mental illness. He also blamed the media, incoherently. This was a distraction from the point at hand, but his remarks turned out to be only a warm-up.