Forget everything that came out of President Donald Trump's mouth Monday.
The real Donald Trump showed up 24 hours later, apparently spoiling for a fight.
Trump, who had been severely criticized for his weak comments Saturday in the wake of the violence in Charlottesville, Va., noting that there were problems "on many sides," had tried to make amends Monday when he called out several groups by name, including the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis and white nationalists.
But 24 hours later, the president apparently had a change of heart.
Trump descended from the gilded upper floors of Trump Towers in Manhattan, purportedly to brief the press on his infrastructure plans.
But the president quickly moved back to the events at Charlottesville, in the process stunning his staff by "going rogue," according to some insiders, veering off script and doubling down on his belief that "both sides" were at fault for the violence that culminated in a man driving his car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing a 32-year-old woman and injuring 19 others.
Who knows what his stance is going to be today.
Once again his remarks were met with immediate revulsion. House Speaker Paul Ryan led the Republican charge, stating unequivocally that 'white supremacy is repulsive. This bigotry is counter to all this country stands for. There can be no moral ambiguity.'
That's what the president doesn't get.
Is it likely that there was some fault on both sides? Absolutely. Video and eyewitnesses appear to show two sides that were itching for a fight - and that's what they got.
What the president fails to understand is that his comments give validation to something most people in this country find abhorrent.
There simply is no place for acceptance of the beliefs espoused by those in the KKK, neo-Nazi or any other white supremacy group.
We demonstrate how great this country is by guaranteeing them the right to peaceably assemble and spout their ugly rhetoric.
And we back it up by repudiating them, by noting we are repulse by their presence and find everything they stand for repugnant.
It is why our brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers fought Hitler and obliterated his dream of an so-called superior Aryan society.
They were not called the Greatest Generation for nothing. All they did was save the world.
Now this country is being called to do it again.
To save ourselves from those, including the president, who would again empower such hateful, dangerous rhetoric.
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