{"id":23802,"date":"2017-08-13T00:46:25","date_gmt":"2017-08-13T00:46:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=23802"},"modified":"2017-08-13T00:46:25","modified_gmt":"2017-08-13T00:46:25","slug":"potus-becomes-equivocator-in-chief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=23802","title":{"rendered":"POTUS becomes &#8216;equivocator in chief&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>I was delighted to learn that the president of the United States would comment on the violence that erupted in Charlottesville, Va.<\/p>\n<p>And for a moment, Donald Trump had me riveted to his statement. He talked about the need for us to unite as one nation, that &#8220;we&#8217;re all Americans.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Then he went off the rails. Big surprise? Not really, I&#8217;ll concede.<\/p>\n<p>The president talked vaguely about &#8220;all sides&#8221; being responsible for the violence. All sides? Let&#8217;s see: White nationalists, including some Ku Klux Klan members, started marching to protest the taking down of Confederate statues. You know what kind of response KKK members evoke, correct?<\/p>\n<p>Then came the counter protesters who despise what the Klan stands for, not to mention the white nationalists who essentially stand for the same thing.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;All sides&#8221; are responsible? I&#8217;m still waiting for the president to issue a full-throated condemnation of the &#8220;alt right&#8221; movement and the white nationalists\/supremacists whose presence at the rally provoked the response in the first place.<\/p>\n<p>Then, during his remarks, he launched into another one of those nonsensical riffs about &#8220;record low&#8221; joblessness and how everything is going so darn well in the United States of America. The implication &#8212; to my ears &#8212; was that all this good news was the result of his becoming president.<\/p>\n<p>Even some <a href=\"http:\/\/www.msn.com\/en-us\/news\/politics\/republican-lawmakers-criticize-trump-response-to-charlottesville\/ar-AApVTCu?li=BBmkt5R&amp;ocid=spartanntp\">Republican lawmakers <\/a>were critical of Trump&#8217;s response.<\/p>\n<p>The president once again missed a tremendous opportunity to speak with passion and eloquence about a segment of our society that needs a serious presidential condemnation. His predecessors &#8212; all of them, regardless of party affiliation &#8212; have risen to the occasion when it has presented itself.<\/p>\n<p>Not the guy who&#8217;s now sitting in The Big Chair.<\/p>\n<p>If I could borrow a term we hear so often via Twitter from the president: <em>sad.<\/em><\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was delighted to learn that the president of the United States would comment on the violence that erupted in Charlottesville, Va. And for a moment, Donald Trump had me riveted to his statement. He talked about the need for us to unite as one nation, that &#8220;we&#8217;re all Americans.&#8221; Then he went off the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=23802\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">POTUS becomes &#8216;equivocator in chief&#8217;<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[1424,2692,6686],"class_list":["post-23802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","tag-donald-trump","tag-kkk","tag-white-nationalists"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23802"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23802\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23804,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23802\/revisions\/23804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}