The gunman behind mosque shootings in New Zealand that left 49 people dead on Friday was a white nationalist terrorist.

You wouldn’t know that from the sympathy tweet offered by President Donald Trump, which read:

Do you think if this attack had been inspired and/or carried out by a jihadi militant that Trump’s remarks would have been so nondescript?

Not a chance.

Trump has gone easy since Charlottesville

But ever since the president spoke of “both sides” being to blame in Charlottesville, knowing that white supremacist demonstrators were chanting racist and anti-Semitic slogans, Trump seems to have gone out of the way to be soft on right wing terror.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies reports that in 2017 there were 31 attacks by right-wing extremists. According to the Anti-Defamation League, right-wing extremists were responsible for 71 percent of extremist-related murders from 2008 to 2017. Islamic extremists were said to be responsible for 26 percent.

America may recently have avoided a massacre like the one in New Zealand when federal authorities arrested Christopher Hasson, a white nationalist with apparent plans to murder Democratic politicians and what he believed to be anti-Trump journalists.

The right-wing threat is growing

Daniel Byman of the Brookings Institution, a public policy think tank, wrote in part after the New Zealand attack, “In the United States, right-wing violence has grown, with Jews and Muslims in particular being targets. The Trump administration has cut programs focusing on right-wing groups even amid a growing threat. Given the recent decline in jihadi violence in the United States, transferring some resources is appropriate.”

Ya think?

Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand’s Prime Minister, spoke of the attack in her country the way Trump – as the supposed leader of the free world – should be talking.

She said, “Many of those who will have been directly affected by the shooting may be migrants to New Zealand. They may even be refugees here. They are us. The person who has perpetuated this violence against us is not.”

If only Trump said what Ardern did

Instead of mirroring those words, President Trump – after his non-specific condolence tweet concerning the New Zealand attack – went on twitter rants about the Obama administration and the Mueller report.

Even worse, on Friday, when asked if white nationalism was a threat Trump said, “I don’t really. I think it’s a small group of people that have very, very serious problems. I guess, if you look at what happened in New Zealand, perhaps that’s a case. I don’t know enough about it yet.”

Over the weekend, Trump took to twitter to trash, again, the late Sen. John McCain, speaking more harshly about McCain than he has about white nationalist terrorists.

Just when you think he can't get more venal. More s

Meantime, New Zealand’s Prime Minister Arden said, “It is clear that this can only be described as a terrorist attack … These are people who I would describe as having extremist views that have absolutely no place in New Zealand and, in fact, have no place in the world … You may have chosen us – but we utterly reject and condemn you.”

Damn.

We could use someone like that.

Reach Montini at ed.montini@arizonarepublic.com.