When someone asks you if you condemn white supremacists, your'e supposed to say, "Yes," right? Unless, of course, you're a white supremacist.
That's the position Trump found himself in during the debate, when moderator enabler Chris Wallace asked, "Are you willing to condemn white supremacists and militia groups and say they need to stand down and not add to the violence in a number of these cities as we saw in Kenosha and as we've seen in Portland?"
Remember, though, this is Donald "Nazis Are Very Fine People" Trump, so he sort of tried, but he couldn't really land the plane. "Sure, I'm willing to do that," he said, but continued, "I would say almost everything I see is from the left wing, not from the right wing."
Oh.
"So, What are you saying?" asked the enabler, and the abuser blathered, "I'm willing to do -- I want to see peace."
"Then do it, Sir. Say it."
At this point, Trump decides he wants to be very precise in his terminology, and thinks this is an effective stalling technique. "Do you want to call them -- what do you want to call them? Give me a name. Give me a name. Go ahead." he stumbles.
"White supremacists," said the enabler, with surprising surety.
"Who would you like me to condemn?"
At this point, Joe Biden said, "The Proud Boys," and the enabler said, "White supremacists and right wing militia."
"Proud boys, stand back and stand by. But I'll tell you what. I'll tell you what. Somebody's got to do something about antifa and the left. Because this is not a right wing problem," said the current alleged president of the United States.
Did that sound like a condemnation to you? It didn't sound like one to me. It sounded like he was telling them to look to the skies for the bat signal. Why? Because Trump is a white supremacist. And as David Plouffe said after the debate in his analysis on MSNBC:
Guaranteed, the t-shirts with "Stand back and stand by" are already being sold.
YEP.
Today's cartoon in the Montreal Gazette.