Steve Schmidt Rips GOP for ‘Complicit’ Silence on Trump: Dog Whistles Have Given Way to Loudspeakers

Steve Schmidt Rips GOP for ‘Complicit’ Silence on Trump: Dog Whistles Have Given Way to Loudspeakers (Mediaite)

Early Friday, Mitt Romney issued a statement on Facebook denouncing President Donald Trump for his comments on Charlottesville.

“His apologists strain to explain that he didn’t mean what we heard,” Romney said. But what we heard is now the reality, and unless it is addressed by the president as such, with unprecedented candor and strength, there may commence an unraveling of our national fabric.”

Appearing on Deadline: White House Republican strategist Steve Schmidt applauded Romney for his words of condemnation, and pointed to one prominent member of the party who would do well to heed Romney’s swords.

“It’s a powerful moral statement,” Schmidt said. “And I hope his running mate, Paul Ryan, hears it. He has been complicit in his silence in not condemning this moral equivalence between the protestors and the neo-Nazi movement.”

Schmidt went on to accuse the GOP of entering in an unholy alliance with what he termed the “nationalist Trump party.” And Schmidt says it’s an alliance from which the party must promptly break away.

“There was a lot of hoodwinks and dog whistles during this disgusting campaign in 2016 that have now given way to foghorns and loud speakers,” Schmidt said. “What we saw this weekend with this racist rejoicing with the president’s false moral equivalency is this: He’s fused the white nationalist movement as a credible force in American politics with neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan. And the Republican Party cannot exist in coalition with these groups.”