Bigots Get Boost From the Bully Pulpit

Nearly alone among the nation's elected leaders, President Trump saw a nobility of purpose in the fiery procession that began a weekend of street fights in Charlottesville, Va. White nationalists hoisted tiki torches that recalled the horrifying imagery of the Ku Klux Klan. They revived an old Nazi chant--"Blood and Soil"--which had been silenced in 1945 with American blood on German soil. And they mixed in a new anti-Semitic taunt, "Jews will not replace us," meant to declare unity of the white race.

But to the President, those details did not tell the whole story. Marching with the racists, fascists and separatists, he argued, were some "very fine people" with a worthy mission.