I have no doubt that the left and the media have lost their collective minds and are eager to avenge their resounding and epic losses in recent years by objectifying violence as a pretext to political ends in any way they can. Holding race and p.c. as the center of their worldviews through the parsing and twisting of language is all they have left. Though the President's words could have been more aptly chosen, his frustration particularly with an ever increasingly solipsistic agenda-driven media is both understandable and justifiable. He has been condemning racism and bigotry for years.
Here are two of many cases in point: "You have David Duke who just joined...a bigot, a racist, a problem..." (Donald Trump on NBC in February 2000). He went on repeatedly throughout the campaign: "I totally disavow the Ku Klux Klan. I totally disavow David Duke..." (Donald Trump: March 3, 2016). Though his remarks were not meant to be all inclusive, his intentions of denouncing racial supremacy in all its ugly forms were clear. The President is a good man and not a racist. His patriotic zeal is strongly connected to the economic and security issues which matter most, Charlottesville included. I voted for him in the last election and should he decide to seek re-election, would be pleased to do so again.
That being said, the aftermath of Charlottesville was as reasonably foreseeable as it was preventable. But rather than looking out for the public safety, the local police looked away: "Police stood by as adversaries fought..." (Sara Rankin, A.P.). Even a liberal A.P. reporter declined to draw a distinction. In fact, it suggests that authorities wanted things to unfold in the manner in which they did in order to shape a narrative. They should have intervened by arresting the instigators immediately but did not. The implications are as far reaching as they are grave. Mayors in other jurisdictions, many of whom are progressive, have learned vicariously by now that they can stand down their police with impunity to insidiously silence opposition and collaterally promote political ends in the aftermath of any ensuing violence.
As behavior missed the form, the media missed the point. Tacitly sanctioning violence is not morally congruous with free expression. Laws are not relative. They are the building blocks of freedom. The primacy of law enforcement, therefore, to protect the public from all forms of violence cannot be gainsaid. People must grasp this universality and be grasped by it.