Donald Trump this evening retweeted an “Alt Right” (hipster racist movement) leader trying to diminish the outrage over the terrorist attack that took place during a white supremacist protest in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Trump’s elevation of Alt Right leader and conspiracy theory publicist Jack Posobiec took place only a few hours after Trump criticized the Alt Right, and other white supremacists and neo-Nazis, who led the hate rally in Charlottesville that ultimately led to one counter-protester’s death at the hands of an Alt Right terrorist.

Trump’s retweet criticizes the notion that “the media” was outraged over the white supremacist terrorist attack but not over 39 shootings that took place in Chicago, unrelated to terrorism. The intent seems to be to diminish concern about the terrorist murder in Charlottesville, and suggest that any outrage is fake and partisan. In fact, the outrage over the protest, murder, and Trump’s refusal to condemn it has been universal, and included numerous top conservative members of Congress who criticized Trump’s silence.

Trump posted this only hours after he was forced to criticize the neo-Nazis terrorist and other white supremacist marchers. For days, Trump refused, and instead criticized “both sides,” suggesting a false equivalence between neo-Nazi terrorists and regular Americans protesting against hate and intolerance.

Just as troubling, Posobiec is a known conspiracy theorist, and one of the masterminds behind the promotion of the infamous Pizzagate conspiracy that claimed Hillary Clinton was running a child sex ring in the basement of a Washington, DC pizza parlor. (She wasn’t.) This led one man to shoot the pizza parlor up with a rifle, threatening dinner guests.

So, not only is Donald Trump now diminishing the outrage over the terrorist attack in Charlottesville, but he is elevating an Alt Right leader when the march was organized by the Alt Right, and Trump’s own statement earlier today criticized the Alt Right.

It is now clear that Trump had no intention of sincerely acknowledging the severity of the terrorist attack, or of sincerely criticizing its white supremacist and neo-Nazi organizers.

Donald Trump, in his petulance, has now reignited this controversy and yet again fed the flames of division.

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