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Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse
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The remaining members of a presidential arts and humanities panel are resigning on Friday in yet another sign of growing national protest of President Trump’s recent comments on the violence in Charlottesville.
Members of the President’s Committee are drawn from Broadway, Hollywood, and the broader arts and entertainment community and plan to release a letter later Friday explaining their decision, according to two people familiar with the decision who asked for anonymity to speak frankly about the plans.
The commission was established by President Ronald Reagan in 1982. It is among the dozens of mostly ceremonial White House commissions that advise the president on issues ranging from business matters to education policy and physical fitness.
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In a remarkable new turn in the Charlottesville saga, the mother of the young woman who was murdered for protesting racism and white supremacy said on Friday morning that she will not speak to President Trump. In so doing, she shed a whole new light on Trump’s racism and cruelty — and on the profound abdication of basic decency and presidential duty at the core of Trump’s response to the racial violence that erupted last weekend and that could continue.
Speaking on “Good Morning America,” Susan Bro, the mother of Heather Heyer, said the White House had tried to reach her with “frantic” messages, presumably to set up a call with Trump, but added that she would refuse any communications now that Trump has suggested a moral equivalence between the racists, Nazis, and white supremacists in Charlottesville and those protesting them:
QUESTION: Have you talked to him directly yet?
SUSAN BRO: I have not. And now I will not. At first, I just missed his calls. The first call looked like it actually came during the funeral. I didn’t even see that message. There were three more frantic messages from press secretaries throughout the day. And I didn’t know why. That had been on Wednesday. And I was home recovering from the exhaustion of the funeral. So I thought, ‘well, I’ll get to him later.’ And then I had more meetings to establish her foundation. So I hadn’t really watched the news until last night.
And I’m not talking to the president now. I’m sorry. After what he said about my child. It’s not that I saw somebody else’s tweets about him. I saw an actual clip of him at a press conference equating the protesters, like Ms. Heyer, with the KKK and the white supremacists. …You can’t wash this one away by shaking my hand and saying, ‘I’m sorry.’
On Monday, after Trump had read aloud a string of words that did call out white supremacy by name and denounced racism as evil, Bro released a statement thanking Trump for his comments. The next day, Trump held his now-infamous news conference, at which he reverted to blaming “both sides” for the racial violence and claimed that the white supremacists and Nazis had been treated “unfairly” by the media, conspicuously avoiding unambiguous condemnation of them. After watching the clip of Trump — and it’s key that she watched the video, which vividly displayed the depravity and stubborn megalomania coursing through his remarks — Bro now has rescinded her thanks and won’t take his call.
Bro’s emotional response to Trump is a reminder that his reversion to his current reprehensible posture didn’t have to happen. While his flat condemnation of white supremacy did not undo the damage caused by his initial statement on Saturday blaming “many sides,” it largely said the right thing. Republicans were pleased and relieved by it. The mother of the young woman who died had thanked him for it.
But then Trump just had to make a large show of returning to his original position, dividing blame between white supremacists, Nazis and Klansmen on one side, and those protesting their racism, hatred and belief in the inferiority of African Americans and Jews on the other.
