On Monday, the president finally explicitly condemned the neo-Nazis who had staged violent, deadly protests in Charlottesville this weekend, after his “many sides” comment allowed them to skirt responsibility. (Andrew Anglin, founder of the neo-Nazi site the Daily Stormer, said that Trump’s comments “implied the antifa are haters. There was virtually no counter-signaling of us all.”) But only a few hours later he made it clear that he had been extremely reluctant to call out these white supremacists by name:

Made additional remarks on Charlottesville and realize once again that the #Fake News Media will never be satisfied...truly bad people! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 14, 2017

Trump is all but screaming like a petulant racist baby, “They MADE me do it!” At the same time, he’s winking to white supremacists that he’s still with them.

As The New York Times reported, Trump had been taking his cues from another white nationalist in the White House, Steve Bannon, who advised him against criticizing his far-right base. And lest there be any confusion about where he stood, on Tuesday he retweeted one of his racist supporters, who posted a picture of a train running over a CNN reporter. As many pointed out, this was horribly inappropriate after a woman died in Charlottesville after being run over by a white supremacist’s car.

Trump RT'd this pic showing a CNN journalist hit by a train days after a white nationalist ran his car into activists, killed Heather Heyer. pic.twitter.com/tWjdoE70AS — Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) August 15, 2017

Trump deleted the tweet, but he had made his true feelings clear, as he has done all weekend and during his entire presidency.

