The national media rightfully calls out President Trump for making outrageous statements such as his infamous line that there were “some very fine people on both sides” of the deadly confrontation in Charlottesville Saturday. Really?
I know that there were some “very fine” people among the peaceful counter-protesters in Charlottesville — one, a gentle and peaceful woman, was a friend who conducted my daughter’s wedding ceremony and also led a family prayer wishing me a speedy recovery from my hip replacement surgery. (If there is a God, it appears that the Big Guy listened. My recovery is going splendidly.) Would the president care to enumerate the “very fine” people among the Nazis, Klansmen and affiliated white supremacists who traveled from around the country to participate in an event designed to stir up trouble? He can’t name any. He deserves the lambasting he’s received for making such a statement.
The question here in the Old Dominion is, will Virginia’s media call out Governor Terry McAuliffe for making unsubstantiated (though less emotionally charged) statements, the likes of which, had they issued from the mouth of Donald Trump, would be branded immediately as lies?
C.J. Ciaramella with the Reason Foundation’s Hit & Run blog writes the following:
In an interview Monday on the Pod Save the People podcast, hosted by Black Lives Matter activist DeRay Mckesson, McAuliffe claimed the white nationalists who streamed into Charlottesville that weekend hid weapons throughout the town.
“They had battering rams and we had picked up different weapons that they had stashed around the city,” McAuliffe told Mckesson.
The Virginia State Police also disputed McAuliffe’s claims that Virginia State Police were underequipped to deal with the heavily armed militia members at Saturday’s rally.
“The governor was referencing the weapons and tactical gear the members of various groups attending the rally had on their persons,” Geller says. “I can assure you that the Virginia State Police personnel were equipped with more-than-adequate specialized tactical and protective gear for the purpose of fulfilling their duties to serve and protect those in attendance of the August 12 event in Charlottesville.”
McAuliffe claimed in an interview with The New York Times that law enforcement arrived to find a line of militia members who “had better equipment than our State Police had.” In longer comments that were later edited out of the Times‘ story, McAuliffe said that up to 80 percent of the rally attendees were carrying semi-automatic weapons. “You saw the militia walking down the street, you would have thought they were an army,” he said.
That’s Ciaramella’s framing of the issue. The Reason Foundation, a Libertarian organization, is a credible group and certainly no apologist for Nazis and Klansmen or their white-identity politics. Assuming this is a fair summary of the facts, someone needs to dig to the bottom of these conflicting statements. Who gave the accurate accounting — McAuliffe or the Virginia State Police spokesperson? If McAuliffe misspoke, will anyone call him on it?
These questions are part of a larger issue that Virginia’s media have been tip-toeing around. Did the Charlottesville police and State Police bungle the handling of the Saturday demonstration? According to some reports, when clearing the demonstration area at McIntire Park, the police herded the white supremacists into close proximity to the counter-protesters, and that’s when the worst melees broke out. Of course, anyone can claim anything. But do we have a clear idea from authoritative sources what did happen? Do we know who made the command decisions? I’ve seen a lot of ass-covering statements, but no systematic sorting of the facts. Are Virginia’s media interested in finding out, or are they satisfied with the narrative concocted by the national media?
Here’s one reason people will want answers in the future, even if they are not clamoring for them right now. The Alt Right is developing a line of argumentation that James Allen Fields, driver of the car that killed Heather Heyer, undoubtedly will adopt in his defense. Fields, they say, was driving around disoriented in a strange town when he was set upon by Lefties. He accelerated his car to escape them, accidentally plowing into the crowd, put on his brakes when he realized what was happening. Within seconds (and this is viewable on videotape), armed counter-protesters swarmed the vehicle, struck the car with sticks and clubs, and bashed in the rear window. Panicking, Fields threw the car into reverse, toppling attackers like bowling pins.
Please note, I am not making this argument, I’m not excusing Fields, I’m not blaming the counter-protesters, and I’m not engaging in moral equivalency. I’m noting arguments circulated on the Internet that will likely preview Field’s defense. In what is shaping up to be Charlottesville’s trial of the century, Field’s attorneys assuredly will try to shift the blame to others. Besides blaming the counter-protesters, they will blame city and state authorities for making the decisions that unleashed the chaos and precipitated the chain of events leading to the car killing.
It won’t help the cause of justice if McAuliffe is caught making stuff up.
In closing, let me reiterate that I’m not defending white supremacists. Nazis are evil. Klansmen are evil. White supremacists are evil. They picked Charlottesville, Charlottesville didn’t pick them. They spewed hatred and vitriol. They came prepared for violence, and they dished it out. They deserve the full punishment of the law. I wish they had never come to Virginia, and I hope they all go home and never come back. But McAuliffe, who didn’t have a credibility problem before, might have one now.
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