I saw the presser the day of. I was glued to my TV and almost put my fist through it. On that day, he refused to address the fact that the march was not about statues at all. It wasn't that there were some bad apples among a group of historically minded statue preservers. It was a racist march through and through, and there was no other message on that Friday night and Saturday. Trump walked abruptly off the stage after making those prepared remarks you reference to shouts and protests from the people in attendance, because his prepared remarks were about a protest to preserve statues, and the actual protest was about pushing white supremacy and nazism, and had just turned deadly. He refused to answer any of those questions as he scurried off like an orange rat. Two days later, as the firestorm grew over the complete inadequacy of his Saturday prepared remarks, he read a better statement, including the one you initially quoted. Had he left it at that, I know I thought it was good enough. Not perfect, not all that sincere, but good enough.

Unfortunately, the following day, Tuesday, was when he spoke off the cuff, from his heart. It was his most sincere set of statements made on the topic. And they eliminated the basically appropriate statements from the prior day, and even the prepared statements on the day of the march, which did not accurately characterize what that protest had really become - a march for racism, not preservation of historical artifacts.

Ironically since then, it has been the Trump media that has employed propaganda, cherry picking quotes with no context of the overall pattern I describe above, that has completely mischaracterized the overall Trump response to Cville. Whenever the media recalls the true course of events, especially Trump's response over the 4 day period, you get the predictable attacks on the media, and appearance of favorite memes like TDS, from Trumpies who don't like seeing the whole truth. But the whole truth is there no matter how much Trumpies try to obscure it.

[Post edited by hoolstoptheheels at 06/16/2019 1:21PM]