President Donald Trump’s immediate response to deadly white supremacist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, was to draw an equivalence between murderous Nazis and those who assembled to protest them. At the White House the next day, he amended those comments—reluctantly, and incompletely—to center his condemnation on the racists, only to take it all back at an unhinged Tuesday press conference in which he said some of the racists were “fine people.” He claimed that his meandering position on whom to blame for the violence, and whether to call it terrorism, reflected his commitment to “the facts.”

On Thursday, a terrorist killed at least dozen people in Barcelona. Within minutes of the news breaking, Trump tweeted the following:

The United States condemns the terror attack in Barcelona, Spain, and will do whatever is necessary to help. Be tough & strong, we love you! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 17, 2017

Trump was correct that it was a terror attack, though his impulsiveness belies the idea that he ever waits for the facts or has any principled commitment to being accurate or truthful when he speaks. In all his supposed patience for the facts on the ground in Charlottesville, he still managed to make errors from the lectern on Tuesday, to say nothing of larger errors he’s made such as accusing President Barack Obama of wiretapping him and of being born in Kenya.



Trump’s decision to lie about his commitment to facts may be the most irreducible statement he’s ever made about his own character. It has been apparent for some time, but can no longer be denied by anyone who doesn’t value the subjugation of minorities: Corrected for power and wealth, Trump is America’s most irredeemable man. There is nothing about him worth praising as a virtue unto itself. It’s vices all the way down.

In the waning days of the 2016 campaign, Hillary Clinton hinted in a sense that she also sees essentially no merit in Trump as a person. Asked at the second presidential debate to identify something she respected about her opponent, she said, “I respect his children.” She clarified that she believed their abilities and their devotion reflect positive qualities Trump instilled in them.

