just going to see the same kind of policies. my concern is that the hate that we re seeing has been in many ways empowered. now they feel they can come out of the shadows now, and they re being blatant now. this was domestic terrorism. he never used that term. these people had on trump hats. he never addressed that. that is why we really need to show an america that does not stand for going backwards. the when we re calling ministers together that are going to be in washington on the day doctor king made the i a dream speech, we re saying we re at the king monument. you haven t even announced the robert e. lee statue exists. he s the president of the united states. yes, everybody keeps trying to normalize it because we re you know how donald trump is. i ve known donald trump in new york 35 years. he s the president. i know how the president is supposed to be. we re not going to adjust
there was nobody running around with change you can believe in buttons on. these people identified with him. he had a responsibility, if he does not agree with them or want to give them the wing to go emphatically don t use my name, don t identify with my campaign. people that are with donald trump won t say that. they brought him into the middle of their ranks, and he did not address it. why do you think there was a lot of talk on twitter over the weekend about the reason why donald trump wouldn t come out and condemn kkk or white nationalists or supremacists. they voted for him so he is doesn t want to alienate their base. my question to you is what person doesn t want to alienate that base? a person that either is sympathetic or is so callous that they do not care where they get support from. again, i m not going to donald trump would love for me to bite the bait of calling him a name. i want to deal with his actions
do you agree with michael grson gerson s assessment? i think that s fair assessment of where the president is coming from but i think it goes deeper than that. just many any dealings with my dealings with president trump over the years the one thing that struck me about the difference between what we saw taking three days and the immediate response to the ceo of merck mr. frazier was personal. this event wasn t personal. it wasn t an attack on him. he was agnostic about it in the internationals upon. it was kind of forced, i have to respond, okay. when you saw when frazier stepped down from the council because of this incident, his response was immediate, within two hours, well, maybe you can do something about your jacked up prices. that was personal. you know, michael steele, a great point. steve, let me bring you in on
statement. it isn t the end of a difficult, difficult chapter in american history. eric, weigh in on the first reaction and what it says about the president s reflexes. well, first of all, excuse me, i think that what president what president trump did on saturday and the aftermath of these heinous events was pretty reprehensible. it was as easy as pie to say, look, what happened, it was a white supremacist gesture and we reject this as the basis and logic of american democracy and i as a president have no truck with that. instead, he led with ambiguity. he led with false parallels and equivalen equivalencies, trying to draw a fast and hard parallel between black lives matter protesters and others who were against the display of violence on the bigoted right, and those who are
us. we should care about what he does, he s the president of the united states. that s a serious matter but i have given up on looking for moral leadership from this president. i never thought he was capable of it, that s why i wasn t for him and he is who he is. with eshould argue about we should argue about what gorka should be on tv. so if we can get john kelly strength to remove gorka that s good for the country. but trump is not our moral leader. he s not going to be a national healer. there are many others who can do that. this is a large contract. the president is only one person. there are other elected officials. i think as a republican let me just stop you on that point. i m going to let you finish, but is he the instigator? i mean, these are people that stood in the street brazenly. i mean, i take your point and i agree with you. he s not going to be a healer but i think the question to answer and the question for republicans to answer with more