Ignoring the fact that Saturday’s anti-racism gathering of 20,000 people was peaceful and had no major reports of violence, Donald Trump took to Twitter to attack the protesters, calling them “anti-police agitators.”
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Instead of using the moment to calm the flames he’s created over the past week, Trump decided to throw gasoline on them.
The president’s tweet:
Looks like many anti-police agitators in Boston. Police are looking tough and smart! Thank you.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 19, 2017
To make matters even worse, Trump used an earlier Twitter post to heap praise on his former chief strategist, white nationalist Steve Bannon:
Steve Bannon will be a tough and smart new voice at @BreitbartNews…maybe even better than ever before. Fake News needs the competition!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 19, 2017
Trump’s tweets come after Bannon was forced out of the administration following the president’s troubling response to the events in Charlottesville last weekend, in which Trump blamed “many sides” for the violence.
“I think there is blame on both sides,” he said last week at Trump Tower.  “You had a group on one side that was bad. You had a group on the other side that was also very violent. Nobody wants to say that. I’ll say it right now.”
After being caught up in a firestorm of criticism for his defense of the alt-right Nazis in Charlottesville, the president decided it was probably a good time to cut ties with Bannon, who himself is an alt-right white nationalist.
If there was a moment for Trump to reverse the narrative that he is a white supremacist sympathizer, today would have been it.
But instead of aligning himself with the tens of thousands of peaceful demonstrators in Boston – people who spoke out strongly against the hatred we saw in Charlottesville, Virginia just last weekend – he decided to lie about the protesters and talk about how great Steve Bannon is.
Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.
