There was a time, in the distant era of 2015, when condemning nazis was a very low bar for an American politician to clear.

It was so low that candidates were almost never asked their view on the subject, as the default assumption was not only that the candidate rejected them–because they’re fucking nazis–but that nazis were not enough of a pertinent player in the 21st-century political field to merit inquiry. Racists, yes. White supremacists, maybe. But nazis? Swastika-bearing, sieg heil-ing, ethnic-cleansing nazis? Of course not. Of course not.

Today, that low bar is like a limbo pole under which our president cannot pass, having gorged himself on the worship of white supremacists waving tiki torches in a summer party from hell. To the surprise of no one who has followed Donald Trump’s career over the past 40 years–the 1973 lawsuit over anti-black discrimination, his persecution of the innocent Central Park Five, his birther crusade, the entire 2016 presidential campaign–the President backtracked on his bold “nazis are bad” stance from Monday to say, about the “Jews won’t replace us”-chanting far-righters, that there were “a lot of people in that group that were there to innocently protest and very legally protest . . . you had people that were very fine people.”

As for the counter-protesters, they were from “a group on the other side that came charging in without a permit and they were very, very violent,” according to our dear leader. One of those anti-racist protesters, Heather Heyer, was murdered by a white supremacist during an act of domestic terrorism that closely resembled the tactics of ISIS supporters in Europe. After falsely insinuating that Heyer’s mother had praised him, Trump castigated the activists who fought alongside her: “There was a group on this side, you can call them the left. You’ve just called them the left, that came violently attacking the other group . . . yes, I think there is blame on both sides.”

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Trump switched from blaming “many sides,” as he did on Saturday, to blaming “both sides.” He is right that there are two sides: the vestigial tail of the Confederacy and the United States of America; the white supremacists and their targets; the President and the patriots. It is also obvious he favors the side of the nazis. This has been evident since Trump launched his campaign. It became clearer when he hesitated to denounce David Duke in February 2016. It was blindingly obvious on Saturday in his initial reaction to Charlottesville.