Bret Stephens: People Like Synagogue Shooter See Trump’s Rhetoric as Kind ‘of a Permission’

EXCERPT:

STEPHENS: "Yeah. I think that Eddie really touched on the core point here, which is that even if the President doesn’t approve, condone, support any of the people who have carried out the kind of killing that you saw in San Diego, or before that at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, the whole tenor, the whole spirit of his politics gives these people what they see as kind of a permission. It reminds me, in the 1990s there was a terrible case of violent police abuse of a Haitian man. One of the things that the cops allegedly said during this, when they were abusing this Haitian man, was ‘It’s Giuliani time.’ Obviously Mayor Giuliani at the time did not know what was happening, didn't support what the cops did, but those police officers saw the mayor and the way in which he conducted his administration as providing that kind of permission. And I think that in a sense is what you have here, which is that white nationalists look at a president who praises not white nationalism but praises nationalism, and they find ideological comfort in that kind of rhetoric.”