The former national director of the Anti-Defamation League on Sunday scolded Donald Trump for his comments about the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, saying the president needs to admit he made a mistake.
“He still needs to say, ‘I made a mistake.’ He has to get up in some public forum and say, ‘There are no good Nazis, not in Europe, not in the United States,’” Abe Foxman told the Times of Isreal in an interview. “He has to say to the Nazis, ‘I don’t want your vote.’ He needs to say, ‘No, Mr. David Duke, I don’t want you as my friend or as my supporter.’”
Duke is the former Ku Klux Klan leader who praised Trump for doubling down on his initial statement that “many sides” were to blame for the confrontations in Charlottesville that took place on Aug. 12 when white nationalists clashed with counter protestors. Three people died and at least 34 were injured as a result of the clashes.
Foxman said he didn’t think Trump’s comments encouraged racists and neo-Nazis to be more open.
“They always have been here,” he said. “I am not old enough to remember it, but I have seen the film clips of Madison Square Garden, full of Nazis. And that was in New York, not in Virginia. And the Ku Klux Klan had rallies in the thousands in New York State and in New Jersey.”
But the president still has a responsibility to "use his bully pulpit," said Foxman.
“For them to give the kind of interviews they gave, to show their faces as they did, is because they believe that America is different than it used to be. And that’s because of the rhetoric. So President Trump has a responsibility to use his bully pulpit, to say to them, ‘No, I don’t want your support.’ To say that there are no good Nazis."
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