Charlottesville Mayor Michael Signer, thrust into the national spotlight by white supremacists massing in his town and even killing a person there, has been crystal clear that “I place the blame for a lot of what you're seeing in American today right at the doorstep of the White House and the people around the president,” pointing to a campaign that involved “intentional courting of white nationalists.” Now, Signer says he is “kind of finished talking about the president” because of exactly that. He thinks “a lot of this speaks for itself. We saw the campaign they ran, we saw the folks they surround themselves with.”
It’s not that the mayor doesn’t think Trump and his inner circle bear responsibility, it’s that he sees that the country needs solutions this president isn’t interested in being a part of:
“The president, you know, I’d feel fine if I don't talk about him very much. He's been on the sidelines for so much in this country, for [what] working people need and for what a country that really needs to progress and heal and tell the truth about a lot of chapters in our history has been about,” Signer said Monday morning on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “I think the nation is speaking with one voice on that.” [...]
“I think that Charlottesville is going to be synonymous with the nation at long last turning the page on this horrific chapter in American politics where bigots and, you know, the fringe of the fringe were invited into the mainstream, out from the shadows where they belonged,” he added. “That, I think, just came to an end.”
Here’s hoping Signer’s right, but this seems like an overly optimistic take. With a president giving quiet racists implicit encouragement to become loud racists, the fringe is getting plenty of encouragement. At a minimum, people horrified by seeing Nazis on the march in the United States need to be as motivated to stop the spread of white supremacist thinking as white supremacists are in spreading it.