Madeleine Albright calls Trump’s Charlottesville reaction ‘a new low’

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright says President Trump’s comments equating white nationalists and neo-Nazi groups with counterprotesters opposing them mark a “new low” for the president.

“I’ve been troubled generally, frankly, about the way that President Trump never talks about democracy, the kind of the values of our foreign policy have not been mentioned and now we have sunk to this new low in terms of giving a moral equivalency to hatred,” Albright said in an interview with MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell that aired Wednesday.

Albright’s comments came a day after Trump criticized what he deemed the “alt-left” for inciting violence during a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., over the weekend.

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In an off-the-rails news conference Tuesday, Trump said “both sides” deserve blame for the bloody demonstrations, and appeared to defend those who gathered in the Virginia college town to protest the removal of a Confederate statue.

The president’s comments drew immediate backlash from both Democrats and Republicans, who criticized Trump for equating those protesting racism to neo-Nazi and white nationalist groups that incited violence.

Trump, a day before the press briefing, had offered a measured condemnation of racism and hate groups.

Albright denounced Trump’s comments as un-American, saying that it is unprecedented for a U.S. president to compare anti-racism protesters to white supremacists. 

“What he’s doing — he is not normal,” she said. “And what has happened is his reaction to this is not normal. It’s not American.” 

“And I think that what he has done is obviously damaged himself but made people wonder about this moral equivalency, which I just find so stunning, given what we know about appeasing fascists and right-wingers is the way to disaster.”