All In the Family

In the aftermath of the violent Nazi demonstrations in Charlottesville, VA, Trump's noncommittal statement has come under criticism from across the political spectrum, with the exception, of course, of white supremacists. As noted on our home page, the Weekly Standard's Kelly Jane Torrance, appearing on Fox News, condemned Trump's refusal to identify white nationalists as the perpetrators of the Charlottesville violence, or label it domestic terrorism. Also on Fox News, former George W. Bush adviser, Karl Rove, derided Trump's statement as defensive and inadequate.

The neo-Nazi web site the Daily Stormer praised Trump's comments on Charlottesville. "No condemnation at all," the Stormer wrote.

Trump's refusal to distance himself from white supremacist and Nazi elements, or to hold them responsible for the violence in Charlottesville should come as no surprise. White racial resentment is an enduring theme among a significant portion of Trump supporters. And his courting of their support is more than flirtation.

"If there is one consistent thread through Mr. Trump’s political career, it is his overt connection to white resentment and white nationalism," Emory University's Carol Anderson wrote in the New York times a week before the riots in Charlottesville. "Trump’s fixation on Barack Obama’s birth certificate gave him the white nationalist street cred that no other Republican candidate could match," she wrote, asserting that no amount of scandal or incompetence can shake his true believers' faith in Trump as great white leader. Anderson describes the so-called Election Integrity Commission as a direct response to the election of Barack Obama as president. Far from the voter fraud that Trump and his minions imagine, or at least assert, "what happened was that millions of new voters, overwhelmingly African-American, Hispanic and Asian, cast the ballots that put a black man in the White House." The response championed by Trump's sham commission, and promoted by the Republican party throughout the country, Anderson suggests, is a systematic attempt primarily to disenfranchise minorities, as a lawsuit in Indiana claims.

Appearing on CNN's "State of the Union," in February of 2016, then-candidate Trump was asked by host Jake Tapper if he would "unequivocally condemn" former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan David Duke and disavow his support and that of other white supremacists. "I don’t know anything about David Duke, okay," Trump replied. "I don’t know anything about what you're even talking about with white supremacy or white supremacists. I don't know, did he endorse me? Or what's going on. Because I know nothing about David Duke. I know nothing about white supremacists." In 2000, however,  as reported by the Washington Post, Trump had cited Duke's membership in the Reform Party, along with Pat Buchanan and Lenora Fulani, as a reason not to run for president on that ticket.

Is Trump's association with white nationalism yet another manifestation of his well-documented competition with his father? The Washington Post and other sources have reported on Fred Trump's apparent participation in Ku Klux Klan activities in Queens, NY, in the 1920s.

Violence erupted in the streets of the Bronx on Memorial Day, 1927, resulting in the deaths of two Italian fascists. In Queens "1000 white robed Klansmen" marched through Jamaica, protesting alleged assaults on "native-born Protestants" by Catholic members of the New York City police. "Liberty and Democracy have been trampled upon," the Klan propaganda of the day read, in all-too-fmailiar language, "when native-born Protestant Americans dare to organize to protect one flag, the American flag; one school, the public school; and one language, the English language." The march led to a "near riot," in the words of a contemporary news report, in which seven people were arrested — one of them being Fred Trump of 175-24 Devonshire Rd., Donald Trump's father.

Over the course of his business career Fred Trump was cited repeatedly by civil rights groups for racial discrimination in his real estate dealings. This was arguably the beginning of Donald Trump's  life as a public figure: as the Guardian noted, his first mention in the New York Times was in connection with defending his father and the Trump Management company against charges that they had refused to rent apartments to blacks.