Donald Trump has been accused of drawing a false equivalence between racists and anti-racists in his inflammatory press conference in Trump Tower on Tuesday. But if you listen closely to Trump’s remarks about the weekend clash in Charlottesville, they are actually much worse. The president goes out of his way to celebrate those who rallied under Nazi and white nationalists banners to protest the removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, and to denounce the counter-protestors.

“There were people in that rally—and I looked the night before,” Trump said, referring to Friday. “If you look, there were people protesting very quietly the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee. I’m sure in that group there were some bad ones. The following day it looked like they had some rough, bad people: neo-Nazis, white nationalists, whatever you want to call them. But you had a lot of people in that group that were there to innocently protest, and very legally protest—because you know, I don’t know if you know, they had a permit.” By contrast, Trump scorned the counter-protesters, whom he called the “alt-left,” saying they “came charging in without a permit and they were very, very violent.”

By Trump’s account, on the one side you have a group of legal, peaceful protesters and on the other side violent, disruptive counter-protesters. This depiction is at odds with the facts. As John Podhoretz noted in The New York Post, there’s no reason to think the alt-right had “fine people” in it. On that supposedly peaceful Friday night, they chanted “Jews will not replace us” and the Nazi slogan “blood and soil.” Speakers at the event included:



Mike Enoch, who hosts a podcast called “The Daily Shoah.” And Augustus Invictus, an alt-right figure who once said, “I have prophesied for years that I was born for a Great War; that if I did not witness the coming of the Second American Civil War I would begin it myself.” And Christopher Cantwell, who calls himself a “fascist,” along with Johnny Monoxide, who just labels himself “fashy.” And Michael Hill, an ex-professor who said, in 2015, “Never underestimate the perfidy of the organized Jew.” And Matt Heimbach, who says only 27,000 Jews were killed in the Holocaust.

Trump’s defense of the “Unite the Right” demonstrators is not just abhorrent, but politically foolish. After all, there are few groups more universally reviled than neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan, both of whom were out in full force in Charlottesville. By take their side, Trump made himself even more unpopular with the public and worsened his already shaky relationship with the Republican Party and even his own staff, which was reportedly shocked by his performance.

Yet, however counterproductive it might seem, Trump’s full-throttle defense of the rally fits in with his larger approach to politics, which is all about keeping his die-hard followers happy. This tactic might seem odd for a president, who is expected to unite the country at times of crisis, but it makes sense when you consider that Trump is a product of the world of entertainment—reality shows and wrestling matches in particular—where satisfying devoted fans is a business imperative.