Please take a look at the transcript in its entirety. Shortly after the part where he says Nazis should be condemned, he goes on to say that there are "fine people on both sides", undercutting his earlier claim.
I and the other poster looked at the transcript in its entirety, and called upon you to do so as well.
The argument being used to rebut you depends on understanding the transcript in its entirety. Yours depends on taking a few words out of context and misrepresenting the party to whom they refer.
The thing about Trump's speech pattern is that he says word-salads. In both the transcript and the video of the speech, you can see him basically trying to make both points at the same time (as he often does when he's scrambling to figure out what to say). The most charitable steel-man interpretation I can give of his words is
- the specific people who killed a protestor are condemnable
- people were engaging in passionate political demonstration for the issue they were invested in before the killing occurred. They were Americans participating in the American tradition of protest and demonstration, the "fine people" on both sides
Problem is, that second point clashes hard with the footage of the event that showed white-shirted white men carrying tiki torches chanting "blood and soil." Most charitably, Trump wasn't talking about those folks; he was talking about some more moderate, reasonable pro-Lee-statue protestors who were there before the tiki torch mob showed up.
I think people's skepticism that such a moderate protest group actually exists varies, and if your skepticism is dialed to 100%, it's real easy to conclude Trump meant the "Jews will not replace us" crowd were the "fine people" because they don't see any other people he could be talking about.
zahlman|5 months ago
The argument being used to rebut you depends on understanding the transcript in its entirety. Yours depends on taking a few words out of context and misrepresenting the party to whom they refer.
shadowgovt|5 months ago
- the specific people who killed a protestor are condemnable
- people were engaging in passionate political demonstration for the issue they were invested in before the killing occurred. They were Americans participating in the American tradition of protest and demonstration, the "fine people" on both sides
Problem is, that second point clashes hard with the footage of the event that showed white-shirted white men carrying tiki torches chanting "blood and soil." Most charitably, Trump wasn't talking about those folks; he was talking about some more moderate, reasonable pro-Lee-statue protestors who were there before the tiki torch mob showed up.
I think people's skepticism that such a moderate protest group actually exists varies, and if your skepticism is dialed to 100%, it's real easy to conclude Trump meant the "Jews will not replace us" crowd were the "fine people" because they don't see any other people he could be talking about.