Disloyal Opposition. Julie Kelly

Charlottesville riot occurred two months after a Bernie Sanders supporter attempted to murder several Republican congressmen on a baseball field outside of Washington, D.C. Rep. Steve Scalise sustained life-threatening injuries that later required him to use a cane. Media outrage was brief and scant.

      David French, in a frantic piece the night of the Charlottesville melee, when facts were still emerging, attempted to equate an attempted assassination with the events in Charlottesville:

      America is at a dangerous crossroads. I know full well that I could have supplemented my list of violent white supremacist acts with a list of vicious killings and riots from left-wing extremists—including the recent act of lone-wolf progressive terror directed at GOP members of the House and Senate. There is a bloodlust at the political extremes. Now is the time for moral clarity, specific condemnations of vile American movements—no matter how many MAGA hats its members wear—and for actions that back up those appropriately strong words.⁴⁵

      The wanna-be mass murderer hoping to kill a dozen Republican House members was a “lone-wolf progressive.” The alt-right protestor who drove his car through a crowd of counter-protestors and killed one young woman, however, is associated with MAGA-hat-wearing Trump supporters. French’s comparison is a craven example of the sort of false equivalency routinely employed by NeverTrump whenever it is convenient. The outrage about what happened at Charlottesville did not involve Trump. But French and his NeverTrump collaborators could not resist the chance to attack. (French also said Trump’s comments after the riot “hurt the nation he leads.”)

      Bill Kristol called Trump’s post-Charlottesville statement “depressing” and said that it made him sick. (Kristol made no known public statement about the near-murder of Representative Scalise.)

      “The president’s refusal to name the evil in our midst is the behavior of a man whose moral sense is stunted—if he has a moral sense at all,” sneered John Podhoretz in the New York Post. “This is what I feared would be the case when he became president. Perhaps those who say I have an obligation as a conservative to support Trump should wonder what their moral obligations require.”⁴⁶

      NeverTrump also would continue to repeat the Left’s inaccurate trope that Trump commended neo-Nazis when he said there were “good people on both sides.” Stephen Hayes fumed that Trump wouldn’t criticize white supremacists; therefore, Hayes wrote in the Weekly Standard, “white supremacists are convinced that President Trump is more than just open to them.”⁴⁷ Absurd.

      Just as the Left twists any Trump taunt or criticism into an example of his bigotry, so too does NeverTrump. Trump’s criticism of the “Squad”—which includes Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who screamed “we’re gonna impeach the motherfucker” the night she was sworn in—is another example of Trump’s racism and sexism, according to Mona Charen. “Every Republican who is reflexively defensive of Trump’s blatant nativism and racism should put him or herself in the shoes of immigrants and minorities. How can they not feel frightened when he is willing to stoke such ugly flames?”⁴⁸