Forgive the brevity of this diary: I'm on mobile and will update with links asap.
And forgive the title, though intended as a metaphor, for its uncomfortable resemblance to the actual bloodshed of Saturday.
I just want to make sure that we don't lose sight of a few basic facts, which imo should be used as a cudgle for days if not weeks:
1) Trump's brief remarks on Saturday explicitly refused to condemn the Nazis and White Supremacists. Trump actively refused to answer a question on the topic.
2) Only a handful of Republicans actually stepped up and called out Trump for his awful equivalence and/or the White Supremacists for the violence.
3) Several conservatives/rightwingers actually endorsed Trump's remarks, the march, or both.
4) Trump has now been forced by aides to repudiate his Saturday remarks and strongly condemn White Supremacists.
Step 4 is an express repudiatation/withdrawal by Trump of his remarks (yes, forced, but whatever). We can argue by failing to condemn he offered an implicit endorsement - which many of the White Supremacists obviously heard).
Thsrefore, any conservative who were silent during steps 1 though 3 must be asked before anything else: Trump, by his statement today, acknowledged that Republicans have a duty to condemn rightwing extremist violence; a) do you agree with your president, and if so 2) before now, why did you fail to issue a ringing denunciation? Or 3) if not, why not?
Finally, given the obvious glee Trump and Republicans' show condemning radical Islamic extremists, or Islamists, anyone who references the Charlottesville hate groups as anything other than radical rightwing extremists is doing it wrong.
As I said, I'll update asap. And please provide links in the comments to anything relevant and I'll try to add.