The covers of the latest issues of both The New Yorker and The Economist make the same unsubtle, incendiary statement: President Donald Trump is deliberately empowering white supremacists.
The New Yorker cover shows Trump in a small sail boat, his voice filling the sail, which is shaped like the iconic KKK hood, eye-holes, pointed top and all. The Economist cover shows Trump speaking through a megaphone that likewise looks like the hood of a Klansman. Neither cover appears to have any text referencing the inflammatory image.
Here are both covers (h/t Michael Hendrix):
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The Left has been launching accusations that Trump is sounding the “dog whistle” to white supremacists from day one of his campaign. But following the horrific events in Charlottesville over the weekend — which left three people dead, including one 32-year-old woman, Heather Heyer, who was killed when a suspected white nationalist plowed his car into counter-protesters — the claims that Trump is trying to normalize and empower Neo-Nazis, the KKK, and the alt-right have reached a fever pitch.
Trump’s initial response on Saturday, which generally condemned violence and hatred on “many sides,” was met with a chorus of outrage from his critics, who demanded that he specifically call out the white nationalists and accused him of making a “false equivalence” between the alt-right and the Antifa left. As footage and reports show, both the white nationalist alt-right and the far-left Antifa engaged in violence in Charlottesville, with many reports indicating that the Antifa protesters often initiated the conflicts. But it was a suspected member of the alt-right who committed what authorities believe to be a white supremacist terror attack that left an innocent woman dead and 19 injured.
On Monday, Trump did what his critics demanded and clearly condemned white supremacists by name. “Racism is evil, and those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs — including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups that are repugnant to what we hold dear as Americans,” Trump said. However, on Tuesday, in a fiery press conference, Trump once again denounced white supremacists, but repeated that the far-left was also to blame for some of the violence. He also suggested that some who were there protesting the removal of the Robert E. Lee statue were not bigots but good people.
The Left exploded over Trump’s Tuesday remarks, accusing him of defending white supremacists; some on the Right have also blasted Trump’s handling of the situation, particularly for seeming to whitewash the racist ideology of the alt-right.
As for the American people, two polls (CBS News and Marist) published a few days after the highly-controversial press conference showed that a majority of Americans disapproved of Trump’s response to Charlottesville, though responses were sharply divided along party lines, Democrats overwhelmingly disapproving while a strong majority of Republicans approved. The same divide was evident in opinions on whether Trump had accurately described what happened on Friday and Saturday in Charlottesville. Read the full analysis of the poll results here.