The flak that Trump is getting is not because he did not condemn white supremacist groups, it is because he said both groups are same. One was there preaching the idea of owning other people and violence, the second was there to ask for equality.

BLM and KKK may both be violent, but they are being violent for different reasons. You can condemn the violence without equating them. It is like saying Nelson Mandela and Pablo Escobar are same because they fought government and went to prison.

Both groups deserve equal protection under the law and should have the right to assemble. Any violence against either one is equally problematic. The content of their shitty messages is irrelevant.

Both groups get equal protection under the law. That's not what's being discussed here. It's more whether they deserve equal criticism by the media and politicians, and there the message is relevant.

>The content of their shitty messages is irrelevant

To you, but the president endorsing a group or legitimizing the cause of another is not irrelevant.

Again, it's completely fair criticism to call Trump out for not explicitly naming white supremacists or alt-right or whatever in his initial remarks. What I take issue with is that when it's left leaning groups committing similar acts of violence no one on the left and hardly anyone in the national media explicitly calls out Antifa or BLM as having murderers or violent acts carried out amongst its ranks.

Are we going to associate everyone with their political identity or not? It's unethical to do it only when it's a political identity you disagree with.

Why do people continue to associate Micah Xavier Johnson with Black Lives Matter? He himself stated he was not affiliated with any movements or groups. Why? Well... I know why, but can someone please point me to any documented proof that Micah Xavier Johnson was an active member of Black Lives Matter?

Sigh. "Virtue signaling" has become yet another formerly-useful concept now drained of all meaning because everyone uses it to mean "thing I don't like" (ironically, usually because they're virtue signaling).

Listen up: people, including CEOs, actually can have their own opinions on things. They can decide "hey, I don't want to support this guy who refuses to condemn neo-Nazis". That is hardly an unthinkable prospect.

A neo-Nazi killed someone and Trump's first response was to condemn all hate and violence. Was that some sort of secrete white supremacist code that meant hate and violence from neo-Nazis is totes cool? Is that seriously your narrative?

The problem is that his first reaction was to basically say both sides were equally wrong. In this context the two sides where A) neo-nazis and white supremacists, and B) counter protestors who were there to oppose the neo-nazis and white supremacists. This was not a BLM rally, this was an alt-right rally. There might have been some BLM members there, there might even have been some antifa there, but the majority of the crowd that was there was a reaction to the alt-right and in opposition to them, not acting as a member of some other group. By saying both sides were equally to blame he was saying that opposing neo-nazis and white supremacists was wrong. Additionally by not calling out the neo-nazis and white supremacists, and instead merely talking about violence, he's tacitly providing support for them, he's saying that it's only the violent act that was wrong, not the racists or fascists.

I'll reiterate myself because it apparently wasn't clear the first time. I agree with your stance. The appropriate thing to do would have been to explicitly call out the group whose violence escalated the highest. But to pretend this is the first of this type of incident is a lie. And to pretend that other groups that lean left have not had politically motivated violence and murder recently is also a lie. I welcome you and the media to the side of wanting to explicitly call out the groups with the bad actors. If you and the media had an equal and opposite response when BLM killed cops and called for the POTUS to explicitly call out BLM, I'd have nothing to say here.

And once again you ignore the elephant in the room. The neo-nazis and white supremacists irrespective of any violent acts are wrong and should be vehemently and regularly denounced as unamerican detestable organizations. BLM has a good mission and purpose. Yes there may be some individuals in the organization that have reacted in inappropriate and violent ways, but the organization as a whole is a positive thing. By not denouncing the neo-nazis and white supremacists in general, and specifically in this case where they resorted to violence, Trump is tacitly approving of them, which shows he is wholly inappropriate to be the president of the United States.

I'm not ignoring the elephant in the room. I pointed directly at the elephant and even agreed that Trump should have explicitly called them out by their group identity. Where I think we disagree is that Antifa and BLM give credibility to the alt-right and white nationalists. Every time Antifa and BLM gets violent it gives the neo-Nazi assholes an example to point at as a recruiting tool and legitimately argue that they are victims.

>Yes there may be some individuals in the organization that have reacted in inappropriate and violent ways, but the organization as a whole is a positive thing.

BLM and especially Antifa are not "positive things." People who chant "Pigs in a blanket, fry them like bacon" are not people that civilized society should want to associate with. There are some legitimate grievances people of color have about treatment by police, but BLM is not their ally. When Micah Johnson opened fire at a BLM protest and told a hostage negotiator he wanted to kill white people, especially cops... that's not a "positive thing." There are some legitimate grievances any civilized person has against the alt-right, but Antifa who set Berkeley ablaze just because Milo Yanapolis wanted to give a peaceful speech, is not their ally and is not a "positive thing." And it doesn't matter how much of a piece of shit Milo is.

>wholly inappropriate to be the president of the United States.

This we also agree on. I didn't vote for Trump and don't support him now. But that doesn't mean I'm blind to hypocrisy. Trump's comments today were even worse here because he called out white supremacists and neo-Nazis but sort of hemmed and hawed about the alt-right. There's two minds about what the alt-right is. It's either white supremacists, or dumbasses on the internet who like frog memes. Depending on who you ask you'll get one answer or the other. When Trump was asked directly about alt-right he said he didn't know exactly what that was. What he should've done is said it depends on what you mean by alt-right. If you mean people who like memes on the internet, don't care one way or the other about them. If you mean white supremacists, they're assholes. He was most likely this way because the alt-right means a lot to Bannon who almost certainly influenced his speech. It was wrong of Trump.

This is the second time in this discussion that you've referred to Black Lives Matter as an organization that kills or has directed the killing of law enforcement officers. Can you present documented proof?

Joseph Thomas Johnson-Shanks murdered a Kentucky State Trooper

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/suspect-trooper-dea...

Tyrone Harris Jr. fired shots at an unmarked police car, then died in a shootout with the police. He didn't manage to actually kill anyone though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferguson_unrest#Tyrone_Harris_....

Jeffrey Williams shot two police officers in relation to BLM protests and demonstrations in Ferguson. Naturally BLM disavowed him.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/16/williams-ferguson-p...

Micah Johnson killed 5 officers and wounded several others http://www.nationalreview.com/article/437694/black-lives-mat...

There's a few others, but it's hard to find reliable sources because the mainstream media has, as I explicitly called them out for, avoided associating these acts of violence with their group identities.