President Donald Trump speaks about the deadly white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., Monday, Aug. 14, 2017, in the Diplomatic Room of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Trump was in the middle of his usual morning tweetstorm when he sent the image, posted by a supporter who added “Nothing can stop the #TrumpTrain!!," to his nearly 36 million followers.
A car plowed into crowds at a white
nationalist gathering in Charlottesville on Aug. 12, killing one person
and injuring 19 others.
(Photo: Evelyn Hockstein/The Washington Post)
Trump did not immediately condemn the hate groups behind the “Unite the Right” rally, drawing criticism from Democrats and some Republicans. On Monday, the president attempted to make amends and denounced the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis by name, while calling white supremacists “repugnant to all that we hold dear as Americans.”
But even as he attempted to clarify his views, Trump seemed eager to blame the backlash on reporters, in particular CNN. As the president was wrapping up a photo op related to international trade Monday, CNN correspondent Jim Acosta asked him why he had waited so long to condemn the hate groups by name and why he had not answered questions from reporters.
“I like real news, not fake news,” Trump said. Pointing a finger toward Acosta, Trump added: “You are fake news.”
On Aug. 14, President Trump defended his
response to the violence in Charlottesville where white nationalists and
counterprotesters fought.
(Photo: Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)
A user named Mike Holden was replying to a Fox News story that said Trump had told the network in an interview that he was considering issuing a presidential pardon for former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was found guilty of defying a judge's order to halt traffic patrols on suspected undocumented immigrants. “He's a fascist, so not unusual,” Holden wrote, only to find himself retweeted by the 45th president of the United States.
In a telephone interview with The Washington Post, Holden described himself as a 53-year-old information technology worker who lives near Manchester, England, whose politics are left-wing but not radical. He was bracing for Trump's morning dose of tweets -- which because of of the 5-hour time difference usually land around lunchtime for Holden.
Holden said he had walked away from his computer after his tweet and was shocked when he logged back in. “My Twitter went completely bananas,” he said. Holden, who said he was angered by Trump's response to the Charlottesville violence, hoped more people might question Trump's motives.
“It’s a strong term to use, but I wouldn’t apologize for it,” Holden said of the word "fascist." “Why he retweeted it is beyond me, but maybe he got a taste of his own medicine.”
Holden called the Charlottesville rally a "fascist march."
"For a president to still be at Bedminster playing golf and not come out and say more? From a large catalogue of things he’s done, it seemed among the worst," he said.
Holden quickly set a screen shot of Trump's retweet as his Twitter background image and boasted about the endorsement — kind of — in his bio on the social media site.
“Officially Endorsed by the President of the United States,” he wrote. “I wish that were a good thing.”
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Posobiec, a former Navy Reserve intelligence officer, had worked for right-wing website The Rebel. Posobiec gained national attention during “Pizzagate,” a conspiracy theory that claimed Hillary Clinton and her campaign chief harbored a child sex ring in a pizza restaurant in Washington. The Internet-fueled falsehood led a gunman in December to fire an assault-style rifle as he searched the pizzeria, Comet Ping Pong.
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