The most disgusting public performance in the history of the American presidency

David Rothkopf in the Post:

Donald Trump on Tuesday afternoon gave the most disgusting public performance in the history of the American presidency. Framed by the vulgar excess of the lobby of Trump Tower, the president of the United States shook loose the constraints of his more decent-minded advisers and, speaking from his heart, defended white supremacists and by extension, their credos of hatred. He equated with those thugs the courageous Americans who had gathered to stand up to the racism, anti-Semitism and doctrine of violence that won the cheers and Nazi salutes of the alt-right hordes to whom Trump felt such loyalty.

He made it crystal clear, in case anyone hadn’t caught on yet, that the reason it took him so long to rebuke the racist rally is the fact that he didn’t want to, because he liked it.

No one who values the best of what the United States has stood for could watch without feeling revulsion, anger or heartbreak. No one who comes from a past such as mine, which includes similar mobs rising up and ultimately collaborating in the murder of dozens of my family members in Hitler’s Europe, could view Trump’s performance without a degree of fear as well. Certainly, the same must be true for African Americans who have watched such mobs lynch their family members and seek to deny them the most basic rights.

Remember Edgar Ray Killen? He’s the KKK guy who was the architect of the murder of Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner in Neshoba County, Mississippi in 1964. It’s as if we’d made him president. It’s as if we’d made Bull Connor president, or George Wallace, or David Duke. It’s that disgraceful and shaming and filthy.

He has to go.

Every day Trump remains in office is a victory for the extremists. But in that same moment on Tuesday, Trump made it clear that to defeat the champions of hatred in the United States, he must go. That he also must go to preserve the United States’ standing in the world, to ensure the safety of our people and our way of life has also been made clear in the past week. It is now time that we follow his dangerous words with our own actions. It is why Heather Heyer was on that street in Charlottesville. We owe it to her and to ourselves to remove him from office as soon as the law permits. Trump himself has demonstrated the price of each day of delay.

25th Amendment.

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