you re trying to fulfill my promises. why would he not say that today? agree with you. that s why i would prefer him to have staffers who understand moments and who can provide him with texts and prompts as president reagan had around him. to come up with great moments of rhetoric, as president obama had john you need people like that to raise your game on moments of great importance and the president does not have them right now. but i also believe with chris kuns we ought to move forward. we are on the brink of a conversation. if he had those people would that change the way donald trump approaches things. no, because he has general kelly and stop this kind of none accepts in the white house. donald trump is who he is. there is a reason why he won t denounce white supremacists because he actually agrees with part of their world view.
it s a very messy situation. in all of these matters decisions will get made. what is going to happen in north korea, who will trump stand with, are we going to stay in afghanistan and under what circumstances. who is going to win that battle of substance. that is what matters more than anything, more than all of this. we are all out of time. you have to come back tomorrow and pick that up. will you do it? is it a date. that s it for us. that does it for our hour. mtp daily starts right now with katy terr. hi there, nicole. and if it s monday, president trump reviesz his message on the tragic events in charlottesville. good evening and welcome to mtp daily. i m katy terr in new york in for chuck todd. president trump has been in office for almost eight months, and all along we ve wonder erred how will this president respond to the first real crisis.
treena. president obama calls isis the jv s. unfortunately you never get back your mistakes. i agree with democratic senator chris kuns who was on my show this morning and said the president has now done the best that he can in this situation having swung and missed, and that let s move forward and focus on healther highier, lieutenant cull lesson and officer bates. let s focus on making sure it doesn t happen and let s keep an eye on what general mattis said in the last hour. we re on the brink of war with north korea. we should be focusing on the context here. the president did as well as could be done today. he swung and he missed on saturday. do you think he did as well as can be done today? no. i don t think what he did on saturday was a mistake. i think we re making the wrong assumption when we think that he wasn t very intentional in his words. donald trump attacked a judge because he was mexican. donald trump frequently tweets. mexican heritage. frequently retweets wh
and i think we have to call it out for what it is and not be uncomfortable with saying that perhaps donald trump might harbor some racist feelings towards certain groups of americans. nick, we did some deep digging into your past today. wow. a year ago you wrote a very press yent piece about it was entitled white sensing decline donald trump unleashes words of resistance. in making the explicit assertion of white identity and grievance more widespread, mr. trump has galvanized the otherwise marginal world of avowed white nationalists and self described race realists. nick, are you seeing that come into fruition even more so today? absolutely. look, i think that donald trump appealed to a certain people in white americans who felt that white americans should be at the center of american public life and culture, that they are not self acknowledged white
nationalists down the hall from him in the white house. we know exactly who donald trump is. we should not expect him to be different just because he s the president. he is who he is, and he should be held accountable for his association and his ties to white supremacy and not denouncing it is the least surprising thing in this entire scenario. the delay, is that a dog whistle to white nationalists. we ve seen over and over again with this president on the campaign trail and since the campaign was over that when these moments come, he passes, he whifs. he grows cautious. he caters to his base, he doesn t rise to the office. back during the campaign he was asked to renounce david duke and the kkk. half-heartedly with some anger at being asked to do it. we have to look at his actions. i can t read his mind, but for some reason he has decided that there are people in that group he doesn t want to offend or push away from him. i don t know why. they re a tiny fringe. but it s notab