Cornell Brooks: Trump Was Trying to ‘Have His Hate Cake and Eat It Too’

EXCERPT:

BROOKS: "Let us know this — this moment was not a failure of message in terms of the White House office of communications, but it was a failure of morality relative to the office of conscience within the heart of our president, Donald J. Trump, because his response today, which represented a rhetorical minimum, followed an anonymously sourced White House statement that clarified what the President most obviously failed to say, and it followed an initial statement that did not call out the Nazis, did not call out the white supremacists and the Klan. It gave the impression that the President was trying to have his hate cake and eat it, too, in terms of having the White House disavow and condemn these white supremacists by name while he failed to do so. So this was a moment in which he did the rhetorical minimum, but his sincerity and his stature as a president will be measured by how he responds as a matter of policy."