John Oliver: Trump Is Too Self-Obsessed to Disavow Nazis

Condemning people who openly call themselves Nazis and white supremacists is pretty simple stuff: Nazis and white supremacists, bad. People protesting them, good. But in response to the white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Saturday, Donald Trump condemned not the supremacists directly responsible for killing one person and injuring 19, but violence “on many sides.� On Last Week Tonight, John Oliver eviscerated the president’s dodge: “Wait, on many sides?� Oliver said. “This was a white-nationalist rally, you have to call that out by name. There honestly aren’t many instances in modern American politics where you can honestly think, ‘That guy really should have mentioned the Nazis,’ but this is emphatically one of them. It’s like a reverse Godwin’s Law: If you fail to mention Nazism, you lose the argument.� During a bill-signing, the president was given ample opportunity by the press to totally disavow the Nazis terrorizing Virginia, and each time gave non-answers before walking away. “He had one last shot before the buzzer on the Racism Clock hit zero,� Oliver said. “And he threw an air ball so far away it landed in the Third Reich.�