So much for shifting the focus to infrastructure. We’ll get to the moral questions associated with Donald Trump’s reaction to the events in Charlottesville, but let’s start with the political ones. This Monday, in an attempt to contain some of the harm he’d done himself with his equivocations Saturday, Trump delivered a statement denouncing hate groups as “repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.” It came too late, but it at least mollified the bulk of his allies. Then came yesterday’s event, which was intended to move the conversation onto something normal and highlight a streamlining of infrastructure regulations. Instead, Trump got into a debate over what happened on Saturday and made excuses for the organizers of Unite the Right, noting that they don’t “put themselves down as neo-Nazis” and suggesting there were “very fine people on both sides.”

Let us recall that the point of this event was to move on from the weekend. It required a little message discipline and self-control. Once again, more spectacularly than ever, Trump reminded us that he doesn’t have it. Just as he once did after his first debate with Hillary Clinton, which led to a lunatic tweet storm about a former Miss Universe contestant, Trump got baited into reopening a discussion that promised to bury him. He also did so in front of his chief of staff, John Kelly, National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, and O.M.B. Director Mick Mulvaney. As an incredulous colleague of mine put it, “I sincerely can’t believe Trump re-fucked this.”

Let’s consider the moral questions. Can you make a case that there were “very fine people” attending Unite the Right? Only in the same way that some “very fine people” might be Stalinists. It’s true that fringe hangers-on often try to hijack political events and tarnish the vast majority, but that’s not what happened here. The very point of this gathering was to “unite the right,” meaning to do away with disavowals and for attendees to stress how much they had in common, whether they were neo-Confederates or Nazis or white nationalists like Richard Spencer or Klan veterans like David Duke. The iconography of its posters was unmistakably fascistic, with columns of marching Confederate soldiers in front of Nuremberg-style searchlights with eagles reminiscent of Reichsadler flying above. Slogans chanted included, “Jews will not replace us.” So The Onion summed it up best: “Trump Blasts Critics Who Judge Neo-Nazi Groups by Most Extreme Members.”

How should we assess the bat-swingers and projectile-throwers and mace-wielders of the “antifa” activists who showed up to attack the gathering? Not favorably, to be certain. They’re violent and destructive and dangerous to the country, and it’s dishonest of reporters to leave them out of the picture. But it was perverse of Trump, who isn’t a reporter but the head of state, to condemn antifa’s misdeeds when he did. A member of the right-wing fringe had just allegedly murdered a young woman named Heather Heyer. When there’s a killer on one side and a dead body on the other, the all-sides stance becomes inoperative.

(That’s not a partisan statement. When Barack Obama paid tribute to five murdered police officers in Dallas in the summer of 2016, but devoted a fair portion of his speech to the argument that some grievances against police are legitimate, his timing was, in my view, uncharacteristically indecent. Still, let’s be clear: Obama had showed up to pay tribute to those killed. He was meeting with their families. He had denounced the killing as a hate crime. Trump, as of now, still has not even contacted the family of Heather Heyer. It’s a different league altogether.)