Scarborough: Trump Is The President Of The White Nationalist Movement

Joe Scarborough on "Morning Joe" Aug. 16, 2017.
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Expressing grave concern over President Donald Trump’s provocative comments at a press conference Tuesday — where he defended white supremacists by saying both “sides” were to blame for violence that broke out at a rally last weekend — “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough said Trump has officially placed himself on the wrong side of history.

“He is now the President, not only of America, but the white nationalist movement. David Duke saying ‘thank you, Mr. President, for your courage to tell the truth about Charlottesville,'” Scarborough said, referencing tweets from the former Ku Klux Klan leader who thanked Trump for his remarks on Twitter Tuesday. “David Duke, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, Klans members, they stand on one side and apparently the rest of America and the world stands on the other.”

During the press conference Tuesday, the President said both the “alt-left” and the “alt-right” were responsible for violence at a recent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville.

On Saturday, a group of white nationalists gathered to protest the removal of a Robert E. Lee memorial in the southern town, when a self-proclaimed white supremacist allegedly drove his car into a crowd of counter-protestors, killing one woman and injuring more than a dozen people.

 “The President has chosen sides and it is very clear not only morally, especially morally, but also politically, he has chosen the wrong side,” Scarborough said.

He said it is now “up to the rest of us” to decide how to respond and he called on fellow Republicans to avoid indifference or “granting Donald Trump the sort of moral equivalency that Donald Trump granted Nazis, white supremacists and Klans members.”

A former Republican congressman, Scarborough recently announced he would be leaving the GOP party because of the President’s actions and his party’s failure to confront Trump.

“Time and time and time again, they turn the other way. And they’re doing the same thing now,” he said on CBS’ “Late Show” with Stephen Colbert last month.

Watch the full video below:

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