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Of all the ways in which a president might respond to the horror of Charlottesville, refusing to unambiguously denounce neo-Nazis would seem the worst possible, exceeded only by actually defending them.

That Trump managed both is not accidental. In any situation, he always says and does the worst possible thing, for one very simple reason: because any superior course would have been recommended by someone with actual knowledge or experience of the matter.

And if there is one thing Trump knows, it is that no one knows anything — least of all the people who know something. Whatever the experts advise, then, he will do the opposite.

Granted, the video of actual Swastika-bearing Nazis chanting “blood and soil” has caused a rush for the exits among the fellow-travellers of the “alt-right,” who now profess themselves shocked to discover what the movement has always openly and candidly said it stood for.

Whether that will cause the same folks to break with Trump, now that he has so unambiguously tied himself to the white nationalists, is another matter.

And it would not lessen the indictment against them, any more than Trump’s belated, insincere, and as it turned out temporary denunciation could alters the disgrace of what he so plainly believes. He is who he is, and they are who they are.

The case against Trump is so voluminous that by this time argument is pointless. It is, rather, a question of judgment. You either have the judgment to see him for what he is, or you do not.

Indeed, with the passage of time it has become more and more a test of character. Perhaps it was forgivable, or at least understandable, when he first burst upon the scene to allow extraneous considerations to cloud over the central question of his candidacy — is this man fit to be president?

But by now the effort of obtuseness this requires leaves less room for clemency. What was indefensible has become culpable.