Trump is routinely accused of tolerating and even supporting white supremacy. This is because he routinely tolerates and supports white supremacy. When Trump does this, his supporters have a mixed response. Some engaged in a rolling defense. The first line of defense is to deny Trump said the words he said. Since there is usually video or audio of his words, this defense tends to fall quickly. The second line of defense is to insist that Trump’s words were taken out of context. This line usually falls when Trumps words are given in full context. The third line of defense is for the supporters to insist they do not understand how language works and assert that the words Trump used did not mean what they mean. It is fascinating to watch people suddenly become philosophers of language engaged in a deconstruction of meaning that would arouse the most lethargic postmodernist. This line is usually overrun but almost never abandoned: because Trump has yet to say the exact words “I support white supremacy” they can always insist that his words mean something other than what they mean. There is also often a side defense that involves accusing Trump’s opponents of being the real racists. This can be a risky technique since it implies that it is bad to be a racist; but it can be understood that the point of the defense is to attack the opponents and not condemn racism. The final line of defense is that while Trump said what he said and it means what it means, he was just joking or trying to bait the libs or fake news. This can be a risky defense, since it undermines all the other defensive lines—although it is a thing of beauty to see a person run all these defenses at once and insist that all of them are true and work perfectly to defend Trump. Some of his supporters do not bother with these defenses—they are openly fine with Trump saying these
When Trump is directly asked to condemn white supremacists, he has various defenses to avoid doing this. One is to assert that he his prepared to do so. Another is to require that the person asking him the question provide a specific group for him to condemn, as if condemning white supremacy in general is not an option. The third is to blame the left, typically antifa, and accuse them of being the real racists. This should be a gift question—the easy and obvious answer is to just say “yes, I condemn white supremacy.” As an aside, it is interesting that he just doesn’t use his usual tactic and lie—he could simply say he condemns white supremacy and then blow the dog whistle a few times on Twitter to reassure certain supporters that he does not condemn it.
At the recent Presidential debate, the moderator directly asked Trump if he would condemn white supremacists and militia groups. To address the first two lines of defense, here is the full exchange in context:
WALLACE: You have repeatedly criticized the vice president for not specifically calling out antifa and other left-wing extremist groups. But are you willing, tonight, to condemn white supremacists and militia groups and to say that they need to stand down and not add to the violence in a number of these cities as we saw in Kenosha and as we’ve seen in Portland? Are you prepared to specifically do that?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I would say almost everything I see is from the left wing, not from the right wing.
CHRIS WALLACE: So what are you…
TRUMP: If you look…
WALLACE: What are you saying…
TRUMP: I’m willing to do anything – I want to see peace.
WALLACE: Well, then do it, sir.
JOE BIDEN: Say it. Do it. Say it.
TRUMP: Do you want to call them – what do you want to call them? Give me a name. Give me a name. Go ahead…
WALLACE: White supremacists and right-wing militia.
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: Who would you like me to condemn?
BIDEN: The Proud Boys.
TRUMP: Who?
BIDEN: The Proud Boys.
TRUMP: The Proud Boys, stand back, and stand by. But I’ll tell you what. I’ll tell you what – somebody’s got to do something about antifa and the left because this is not a right-wing problem.
As the text shows, Trump followed his usually tactics when directly questioned—at least until Biden brought up the Proud Boys (a far right neo-fascist organization that promotes violence) and Trump responded. He tells them to “stand back and stand by” and then seems to imply that they are the somebody that must do something about Antifia and the left. As always, he blames the left for the violence, pretending to ignore the fact that right-wing groups present the greatest domestic terrorist threat in the United States.
Trump’s defenders could argue that Trump misspoke when he said, “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by.” That is, he was not telling them to stand back for now and stand by to, one might infer, go attack Antifa and the left. Rather, he meant to say “Proud Boys stand down” as Wallace requested. Trump’s difficulty with language is well known—so he could be defended on these grounds. There are, however, two problems with this defense. The first is that when Trump has a language failure, he attempts to quickly fix it in an awkward and obvious manner and he never did this during the debate. The second is that the Proud Boys seem to understand exactly what he meant.
After observing the results of the debate, Trump has now asserted that he did mean to say “stand down” and has engaged in another one of his tactics: he claims to have no idea who the Proud Boys are. While it is certainly plausible for Trump to claim ignorance, it is still a bizarre defense for the President. Or anyone with 3o seconds and access to Wikipedia. When pressed again about white supremacists, Trump resorted to his usual approach, talking about law and order, and pointedly refusing to condemn white supremacists. I cannot tell whether his supporters are victims or accomplices of Trump in this matter.
While some of his supporters are clearly accomplices to Trump, I am not sure if any of them are victims—that is, they honestly believe Trump and sincerely believe that he does not tolerate and support white supremacists. Put roughly, I’m divided between seeing them as epistemically or morally defective.
In closing, what Trump says does not really matter in terms of the election. His supporters either do not know what he is or are fine with it and there seems to be nothing that would cause them to not vote for him. His opponents are also committed. There are, somehow, some undecided voters—but I have no idea what would push them one way or another at this point. What could they be waiting to learn about Trump or Biden?
Note: The blog has been edited slightly from the original to make it clearer that Biden brought up the Proud Boys and then Trump responded. Since Trump did not bring up the Proud Boys it cannot be claimed that he knew about them because he brought them up. Given Trump’s general ignorance it is not implausible that he has as much knowledge of the Proud Boys as he does about other political entities.
To anticipate some criticisms you may get here, I think the transcript you quote misses that Biden is the one who brings up the Proud Boys, if you listen to the tape. Still, Trump certainly responds right away as if he recognizes the name. If he had never heard of the Proud Boys, he wouldn’t have known to address them that way. But you may want to revise so as not to depend so much on the official transcript, since Trump was not the first one to mention them.
Thanks, I’ve updated the transcript with one from NPR and edited the blog accordingly. I am, of course, leaving the comments critical of my error in place.
I’m a fan of your work, but it’s alarming how disingenuous you’re being in this post. Did you watch the debate? Biden is the one who brought up the Proud Boys and Trump just went along with it. Trump looks bad enough already, I don’t think you need to lie by omission to make your point.
Thanks for the correction; I have updated the text of the blog and corrected my error in attributing bringing up the Proud Boys to Trump; the early transcript I used was obviously in error (by intent or accident by the source) and I went to NPR to get the complete version.
CC, thank you for the correction. If you return here much, you will note a pattern. Mike usually builds an argument by citing sources that he links to. These sources are most commonly the news outlets that he is, I presume, comfortable with. Mike deserves credit in that he provides links to his sources, and summarises their points accurately. I wish the same could be said of all all online arguments.
However, Mike does not always do due diligence on the linked stories themselves, which should constitute the facts on which he builds his case. That is, he relies on the assertions of these sources without checking. Sadly, the quality of online news such that people wanting to take responsibility for writing truth need to verify their sources. In this case, Mike quoted the alleged transcript rather than linking to it, but otherwise this instance is unexceptional. As you note, this transcript is wrong. A quick search finds many copies of the transcript that are correct, and of course the original video is easily available; nevertheless Mike relies on a falsehood to build his argument.
I used to check some of the most obviously questionable linked assertions until I had a pandemic-related break in March, and found this pattern very common. Not all essays rely on assertions that are simply and provably false; most of the questionable assertions suffer from the more common failures of evidence and critical thinking that make them unreliable, as far as a casual internet check can tell. rather than outright false. Checking these links, however, takes time – perhaps half an hour, perhaps several hours. In the competitive world of partisan advocacy in the US, who has time to check their facts?
I don’t recall Mike retracting or correcting any of his essays in response to demonstrations of inadequacy or falsehood of his premises, and I doubt he will this time either. But if you’re interested in learning about the failings of online journalism of the leftist kind, you could do worse than following up Mike’s references.
I do admit to errors. In some cases, though, the alleged errors are that I do not agree with what my critics believe.
In any case, if I were truly a liar and disingenuous, would I leave up criticism of my views and claims that I am a liar and disingenuous? Surely I would cleanse my site and so protect my lies. Unless, of course, I am engaged in 12D chess and doing this to give my lies credibility.
I agree, often the examples used here are could be better selected. I would actually like to see the main testaments of the alt-right, Jordan Peterson, etc., taken on here and analyzed in detail, rather than having their arguments characterized in a general way or through a somewhat random link.
But I disagree that it makes any difference in this case, which is why I wanted to preempt any hair-splitting. And it usually doesn’t make any difference — it’s a just a weak defense to search for some minor flaw in the premises/evidence as a path toward invalidating the whole argument.
And the notion that there’s anything “leftist” in play here is way off the mark.
I blogged for almost 8 years. One of the reasons I stopped, (besides being overloaded by grad-school stuff, work and believing that all blogging did was contribute more chaos), was because it seemed to produce more fallacious thinking in myself. As you point out, research takes a lot of time. Double-checking and cross-checking information is hard work. It’s too tempting to find the first article online that fits one’s predetermines narrative, and link to it as “proof” that the narrative is correct.
Steve Coll, a well-known author who wrote the excellent book, Ghost Wars, subsequently wrote a national security blog for the New Yorker. He said he stopped the blog because he learned that blogging was a terrible format for producing outstanding materials, because a post was often generated after only cursory research.
Anyone who’s honest at all comes to the same conclusion as did Shakespeare: “There is more in heaven and earth Horatio, than is contained in your philosophy”.
That said, there’s a difference between not-so-rigorous posting and outright intellectual dishonesty. And at least where Trump is concerned this blog edged into the land of the dishonest. In virtually every paragraph of every Trump post, I see question begging. Since there are so many assertions presented as fact on issues that are themselves highly debated, it would take days to deconstruct them and present counter-arguments.
After merely scanning this post, I see that Proud Boys are a “neo-fascist organization”.
From the Proud Boys own website, here is what seems to be their charter:
“Minimal Government
Maximum Freedom
Anti-Political Correctness
Anti-Drug War
Closed Borders
Anti-Racial Guilt
Anti-Racism
Pro-Free Speech (1st Amendment)
Pro-Gun Rights (2nd Amendment)
Glorifying the Entrepreneur
Venerating the Housewife
Reinstating a Spirit of Western Chauvinism”
Apparently minimal government, anti-racism, free speech and the individual right to own a firearm are now “fascist” tenets.
From Mike’s own post on Fascism: “The focus of the fascist is on race rather than class.” The Proud Boy’s message seems to be: “we’re tired of the race issue”.
Also from Mike’s post on Fascism: “The fascists also have a negative view of liberty—the state is to decide what freedoms people have, depriving them of what the rulers regard as useless and possibly harmful liberties. Fascists also deify the state, regarding it as having “a will and a personality.”
The Proud Boy’s clearly state they believe in the opposite.
Proud Boys disavow the Alt-Right, wanting nothing to do with things like the “Jewish Question”. https://officialproudboys.com/proud-boys/we-are-not-alt-right/
When people like CC use Alt-Right and Jordan Peterson in same sentence though, who can survive?
The leader of the Proud Boys is Enrique Tarrio, a man born to a Cuban family. There are black members of Proud Boys. The founder of Proud Boys, Gavin McInnes has echoed my thoughts on what is really going on in this culture war: It’s Revenge of the Nerds. The credentialed class still can’t get over being snubbed for the prom and watching the kid who cheated off them in algebra get the girl, even 40 years later. The tech nerds, lacking proper amounts of sunlight, exercise and red meat, become a mob against the likes of Joe Rogan and even people Larping machismo, like former Twitch Streamer Dr. Disrespect.
The modern American Cultural Revolution is Revenge of the Nerds. The wedgie they got at science camp simply cannot be forgotten.
Funny you took issue with the characterization of the Proud Boys as “neo-fascist” but not as violent. Not so easy to split hairs over that part? Or are there photos on the website of the group sitting quietly with anti-racist reading materials, so that settles it?
Funny you took issue with none of it, nerd.