Hunting for the real Trump on Charlottesville

It was my first entry into California statewide politics— opening the Richard Nixon for Governor office in downtown San Diego in 1962. 

But before leaving my campus at San Diego State College (now University), I joined several thousand students in gathering in the open-air Greek Bowl to watch and listen to the head of the American Nazi Party, George Lincoln Rockwell.

{mosads}Growing up during World War II, I was not very sympathetic towards Nazis, especially if they were American-born.

I took part in a meeting as a student where decisions were made regarding the Rockwell appearance. We asked the police to keep officers out of sight so edgy activist students wouldn’t get excited. We decided if there was any trouble, student leaders (and some football players) sitting in the front row would handle the trouble.

The trouble occurred. Several of us rushed in to break up the fight between Rockwell’s bodyguards and two Jewish students who threw eggs at Rockwell. One managed to knock Rockwell to the ground. Needless to say, all local television news caught the trouble. 

Still, we opened the busy and crowded Nixon headquarters without a hitch.

I was greeted at home by my San Diego police officer father and World War II vet with: “Did you enjoy punching out Nazis?”

There I was all over the local news trading punches with a skinny Nazi, complete with a red armband with a black swastika.

“Yes I did.” I still relish the moment 55 years later.

That was a long time ago. The scene flashed before my eyes this weekend when I watched the Ku Klux Klan, Nazis and white supremacists parade around Charlottesville, Virginia, a state I reviled in the 1960s for its hardcore racism and segregation led by neo-Confederate congressmen and Senators.  

The fighting that occurred there looked like déjà vu all over again. This time, someone died. 

As it happened I was in Arizona this weekend, a state that President Trump handily carried in contrast to my California in which Trump was obliterated by Hillary Clinton last year. I didn’t hear a single Arizonan raise a voice about what happened and didn’t hear single person reject President Trump’s statement regarding the violence.

I was upset. I couldn’t believe that President Trump could possibly have missed this opportunity to blast these homegrown terrorists of the right. Saturday was all about racism, bigotry and xenophobia.

I am not alone. But I must defer to someone not as biased as I am. Professor Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia is one of the country’s best commentators on politics. He has been associated with the University of Virginia for decades. His comments on Saturday and Sunday were that in his decades at the university he had never seen what he saw in his front yard on Saturday.

On Monday, he, like so many of us, watched and commented on President Trump’s emergency statement to the country that attempted to make up for his embarrassing comments on Saturday; comments in which he forgot to criticize the Ku Klux Klan, white supremacists, neo-Nazis and white nationalists for the trouble they caused. A riot and confrontation is one thing, the murder of a young woman anti-Nazi protestor is another. 

Professor Sabato clearly stated that President Trump was “forced” to make Monday’s statement because the trouble-making domestic terrorists were crystal clear in their statements that they support President Trump and consider him one of them. Sabato says that these terrorists believe that President Trump is their president and he approves and encourages them with a “wink and a nod.”

So, who to believe?

President Trump ate his own Saturday words on Monday by specifically attacking Nazis, white supremacists and other Charlottesville troublemakers for their “racism” and “violence.” 

“Racism” he said is “evil” and it has “no place in America.”

Is that the Trump we have as president, or is he the Trump that former KKK leader David Duke says he supports? 

Which is the real Trump?

Raoul Lowery Contreras is the author of “The Armenian Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” (Berkeley Press) and “The Mexican Border: Immigration, War and a Trillion Dollars in Trade” (Floricanto Press); he formerly wrote for the New York Times’ New America News Service…

The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the views of The Hill.