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President Donald Trump has said that a far-right group should “stand down” and let law enforcement do their jobs, after its refusal to explicitly condemn the group in a televised debate sparked a backlash.
Trump said “I don’t know who the Proud Boys are,” a day after urging them in the election debate with Joe Biden to “back off and stay out of it.”
Members of the Proud Boys called his debate comments “historic” and an endorsement.
Biden said Trump had “refused to repudiate white supremacists.”
The exchange came during the first of three televised debates between the two men ahead of the Nov.3 election. The debate turned into fights, disputes and insults, and the American media described it as chaotic, ugly and horrible.
The committee that regulates the debates said it would introduce new measures in the next two to “maintain order.” Trump said they should get a new host and a smarter Democratic candidate.
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Not much was learned about politics, and while a quick poll on the debate gave Biden a slight edge, other opinion polls suggest that 90% of Americans have already made a decision on who to vote for and the debate may has made little difference.
Biden has always led Trump in national polls, but polls in so-called battle states suggest the vote could still be close competition.
What did Trump say about the Proud Boys in the debate?
Moderator Chris Wallace asked if the president would condemn white supremacists and tell them to stand down during the protests. These have erupted this year because of the problems of police killings and racism.
“Sure, I’m willing to … but I would say almost everything I see is from the left wing, not the right wing,” Trump said.
Biden said “Proud Boys” twice when the president asked who he was told to condemn.
The president said, “Proud Boys, stand back and wait. But I’ll tell you one thing … Someone has to do something about Antifa and the left because this is not a right-wing problem.”
- Who are Proud Boys and Antifa?
Founded in 2016, Proud Boys is an all-male, far-right, anti-immigrant group with a history of street violence against left-wing opponents. A Proud Boys social media account posted the “Stand Back, Stand By” logo.
Antifa, short for “antifascist,” is a loose affiliation of far-left activists who often clash with the far-right in protests.
How did Trump clarify his comments in the debate?
He was speaking on the White House lawn Wednesday before a campaign trip to Minnesota. A reporter asked him about the Proud Boys, saying: “I don’t know who they are. I can only say that they have to stand down and let law enforcement do their job.”
He reiterated his demand that Biden condemn antifa activities.
He did not clarify his use of “stand by” in the debate, saying only that he wanted “law and order to be a very important part of our campaign” when asked if he liked the support of white supremacy.
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Pressed again on the subject, he said: “I have always denounced any form, any form of all that.”
A White House statement after a neo-Nazi killed an anti-white supremacy protester with his car in Charlottesville in 2017 condemned “the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups.” Trump also said there were “very good people on both sides” during those protests.
Trump has tended to downplay the threat from white supremacist groups, although the Department of Homeland Security says they will remain the most “persistent and deadly” threat in the United States until next year.
When faced with difficult or complicated problems, Donald Trump tends to offer a smorgasbord of often contradictory answers, allowing his supporters (and detractors) to choose what to believe.
Nowhere has this behavior been more pronounced than when targeting white supremacists and far-right groups. Sometimes he has given up on them. On other occasions, he makes a mistake or changes the subject when a direct conviction is enough.
Instead, the president ends up offering a rallying cry to hate groups, as he did after the 2017 Charlottesville violence or with his “back off and stay alert” message on Tuesday.
The president can say all the right things politically, then turn around and say all the wrong things, letting his aides clean up the mess.
Is it because the president is careless with his words, misunderstood by critics and a contradictory press, or because he is sensitive to the concerns of even the nastiest elements in his support base?
Despite all that he talks and tweets, the president, intentionally or not, is still a cipher.
What was the president accused of?
Joe Biden returned to the subject in a tweet on Wednesday, saying: “There is no other way to put it: the president of the United States refused last night to repudiate white supremacists on the stage of the debate.”
In his tweet, he quoted a comment, addressed to the president, from a Proud Boys online forum that read: “This makes me so happy. We are ready! Waiting, sir.”
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Reuters
Members of the Proud Boys gather in Portland, Oregon this past weekend
The Executive Director of the Anti-Defamation League, Jonathan Greenblatt, said Trump’s words were “astonishing” and Rita Katz of the extremist watchdog SITE said Trump had given “another nod to white supremacists.”
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The members of the Proud Boys certainly believed they had been supported by Trump.
Organizer Joe Biggs wrote: “President Trump told the proud boys to wait because someone needs to deal with antifa … well sir! We are ready !!”
One member said the group was already experiencing a surge in new recruits.
What were the other key moments in the debate?
The 90-minute debate in Cleveland, Ohio, was chaotic, with frequent interruptions and the men insulting each other.
The main problems included:
- Among the insults, Biden called the president a “clown.” He said to the president, “Do you want to shut up, man?” and then blurted out “Keep barking man”
- Trump said Biden “had graduated as the shortest or nearly the shortest in his class” and had done nothing in 47 years of politics.
- Biden said Trump had “panicked” over the coronavirus epidemic and that “a lot of people died.” Later, Trump tweeted that many more would have died if Biden had been president.
- Trump defended his effort to quickly fill a seat on the US Supreme Court, while Joe Biden declined to respond when asked if he would try to expand the number of justices.
- When asked if he would encourage his supporters to be peaceful if the election results were not clear, Trump said: “I am encouraging my supporters to go to the polls and watch very closely.”
- When Trump said that Biden would be urging the left of the Democratic Party on health and environmental policy, Biden responded, “I am the Democratic Party right now.”
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What happens now?
The war of words that followed the debate continued into Wednesday’s exchanges.
On Twitter, Trump said that Biden would destroy the country, claiming the challenger wishes to fill the Supreme Court with justices, end fracking and end the Second Amendment to the Constitution, which includes the right to bear arms.
Joe Biden is on an all-day train ride through eastern Ohio and western Pennsylvania, while his campaign has also launched a digital ad attack on the president.
He said on the first stop of his tour that Trump “had forgotten about the forgotten Americans he said he was going to fight for. I will never forget them.”
Mr. Biden added, “I’m not going to be a Democratic president. I’m going to be an American president.”
The other television debates between the two candidates are on October 15 in Florida and October 22 in Tennessee.
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