Trump condemns 'white supremacists' as DOJ opens probe
Trump condemns 'white supremacists' as DOJ opens probe
Reaction and analysis of the aftermath of the Charlottesville violence on 'The Five'
This is a rush transcript from "The Five," August 14, 2017. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
KIMBERLY GUILFOYLE, CO-HOST: Hello, everyone, welcome to "The Five," I'm Kimberly Guilfoyle. Tonight brand new developments on the racially motivated domestic terror attack in Charlottesville.
Plus, in depth analysis of Saturday's bloody white supremacist protest extremely a difficult weekend for Virginia and for our nation. Today, President Trump once again condemned the violence, this time directly addressing the racist hate groups responsible by name.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: To anyone who acted criminally in this weekend's racist violence. You will be held fully accountable. Justice will be delivered. 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 everything we hold dear as Americans. As a candidate, I promised to restore law and order to our country and our federal law enforcement agencies are following through on that pledge. We will defend and protect the sacred rights of all Americans.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GUILFOYLE: Attorney General Jeff Sessions says, the Justice Department is taking vigorous actions to protect all Americans against racism and bigotry after opening a civil rights investigation.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ATTORNEY GENERAL JEFF SESSIONS: Justice will be done. We are coming after these people. It will not be tolerated. It cannot be tolerated in America.
We go right it directly, morally, legally, politically, legitimately in any way possible to reject this kind of ideology that causes division. It does meet the definition of domestic terrorism in our statute.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GUILFOYLE: Today, the man accused of killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer by ramming his car into a crowd of peaceful protesters was denied bail in his first court appearance. More details on that later.
Any moment, President Trump is expected to arrive at Trump Tower in New York City. And this will be his first day there since inauguration. And there are crowds of protesters outside. And we're going to be keeping a close eye on that and bring you any of the developments.
All right. Dana, let's turn the discussion to, you know, the protests, the death that occurred this weekend. Kind of take us through it in terms of the messaging, the communications the President's initial statements. Sort of the outcry after and then the follow up with today.
DANA PERINO, CO-HOST: A lot of the good summary of all the things that have happened. And I think the President's statement today was well written, well delivered.
GUILFOYLE: Um-huh.
PERINO: Okay? I do think it was really late. And I think what happened Saturday when he -- I think I can understand the caution of not knowing who it specifically had committed the murder. I wouldn't have tweeted best regards. I also would not have waited, you know, the two days to answer more questions about it. For example, today when he gave a statement, he had said on Friday that he was going to give a press conference on Monday.
GUILFOYLE: Um-huh.
PERINO: That is a Perino pr rule, never announce a press conference until the morning up because you don't know what the questions are going to be in the news of the day. I think he would have benefited today from taking questions at that moment. Because he is frustrated now that he feels like his -- his sincerity today is being questioned. That it wasn't good enough for the media.
GUILFOYLE: He tweeted that.
PERINO: Yes. He tweeted that which basically make it looks like it wasn't sincere but he was doing it to make sure that the media was nullified. And I think that if he had spoken from the heart without the teleprompter and questions with reporters, he would have done himself real service. Because when he took questions on the plane last week, like that 10 to 20 manipulates.
GUILFOYLE: Yes.
PERINO: It was like, obviously nobody speaks as well for him as he does for himself.
GUILFOYLE: True.
PERINO: So, for the 48 hours I think that that was kind of unfortunate but then moving on, how do you move forward with it?
GUILFOYLE: Yes.
PERINO: The protests are going to happen. They are also continuing. There is also some sad things that are happening. Just about an hour ago, some leftists I would call them pulled down the Robert E. Lee statue in Durham, North Carolina.
GUILFOYLE: Uh-hm.
PERINO: There is more violence that is expected. All of this stuff. And Greg will talk about the media part of it in the B-block. I don't think this is going to necessarily get better initially. I think we are in for some tough nights ahead, maybe even days. And the schools are all coming back. And the danger of not having clear moral authority is a problem for the country. The nation turns their eyes to the President for certain reasons in certain events and Saturday was one of them.
GUILFOYLE: Okay. All right. So, Greg, obviously, you know, Attorney General Jeff Sessions taking this moment to specifically identify this as an act of domestic terrorism. And, of course, this also coming in conjunction with the President's, you know, renewed statement that he issued regarding condemning this violence.
GREG GUTFELD, CO-HOST: Yes. And I think that's the correct position to take. However, I'm aware that nothing that Donald Trump says will ever be enough. Let's face it. The people that hate him hate him. There is nothing he can say. He might have made unforced error. But there is nothing that he can do to please the people. We saw how angry people, were more angry about his response than they were about the actual act.
I saw it. I read it. I saw the rage. Does his statement, any statement effect the outcome from Saturday? Not to those people. What I find interesting is, we spent so much time on North Korea, obsessing on North Korea. Wondering what was going to happen this weekend. And I finally realized the solution to North Korea is to just ignore it and forget about it. Because that's exactly what we did.
We took an event in Charlottesville and just completely erased this international threat. This existential threat that we have been talking about nonstop for weeks. That just went away. And it's still there but we don't talk about it. We are not going to talk about it tonight. Every side has bad people. Some people have more bad people, some places have more bad people than other.
On the right, it is usually skin heads, white power freaks. On the left, you got the anarchists who burn stuff down. You're an anti-fa that bet up demonstrators. You have black militants who will shoot a cop. You have earth festers who hammered nails into trees so loggers get crippled. These people are all the same. And even more, you have Westboro and you have the Nazis in Skokie, and you have skin heads in England. This stuff has been around.
The racist right is learning from the fascist left who have eliminated debate. That's why this happened. They are all dirt bags. The right wing Nazis, the violent anarchists. There was an article in the "The Washington Post" two days before this happened. And I hope we have it here. It was written by somebody named Perry Stein. I don't know if you have a picture of this anywhere. But this is an interesting. Do you have it?
Check out the headline. What draws Americans to anarchy. It is more than smashing windows. They do anarchy with a lifestyle choice with a guy holding a baseball bat. So, what the media is telling you right there, right now is that some violence is more acceptable than others. So, if you are going to call out the thugs, call out the thugs everywhere.
GUILFOYLE: Right.
GUTFELD: Sorry.
GUILFOYLE: All right. Juan, I want to get your reflections on this. Something, you have written about as well and studied in terms of American history, civil rights, et cetera. What did you think about the way that this went down in terms of the chronology events, the President's statement and then what has happened today in the aftermath.
JUAN WILLIAMS, CO-HOST: Well, I mean, you know, the historical view is just so painful because it's almost like we are back in the 1960s and we are right back before the era, even let's say of the civil rights act. But even if you stop to think about it, some of the anger that you saw after the Brown decision in 1954. You think, what is going on? Where is this massive resistance coming from? What is this about?
I don't think it's fair to say that this represents most people of any stripe. But I think that it is important to say that from the President's presidential point of view picking up on something Dana was talking about, which is moral authority. I think back to people like President Eisenhower making it very clear that we are not going to have people stand in the way of children going to school, I think of President Kennedy who had many supporters in the Democratic ranks were in the South at that time.
Being very clear that we stand against people being denied equal rights in this country, I think of President George H.W. Bush saying much the same thing. I think of John McCain. John McCain in the midst of his contest with Barack Obama saying to a woman who stood up and said some nasty things about Obama. I'm sorry, ma'am, that's not what we are doing here. We have policy differences but he is a good family man.
GUILFOYLE: Yes. I remember that. Good point.
WILLIAMS: So, I mean, but all of a sudden, you know, Donald Trump who is so quick of whit found himself bailing and could not speak honestly in from the heart at a critical moment when America sought moral leadership. And today, you had a black member of his business council, a man who is the president of Merck withdraw from the council because he said, he could not abide by the President's failure to speak clearly on a moral issue. What happened?
Donald Trump didn't have to wait this time. He shot right back and started attacking the guy and Merck for high drug prices. Again, it just seems to me even with the statement today which was fine that it struck me as if someone had told him to give up McDonald's. You know, he said oh, gosh, do I have to? Okay. And he makes a statement. He reads from the prompter which he is always saying is a silly thing to do and then he runs out of the room before he can answer any questions, it's really upsetting to me. Because it seems to me that it ultimately invites more racial division in our country at a point at which you think, gosh, we are beyond this.
GUTFELD: I think, you know, what invites more racial division I'm sorry, Jesse --
JESSE WATTERS, CO-HOST: No problem.
GUTFELD: -- is when you say this is part of a greater hole. These are all white people. This is a white -- like which is what is happening on Twitter and a lot of media people are doing. Sorry.
WATTERS: I want to be clear. The Trump is not the villain. The racist killer is the villain in Charlottesville.
GUILFOYLE: Uh-hum.
WATTERS: And if Trump, you know, had named names, would the media have not created a firestorm? Yes. If Trump had name names, would his enemies still hated him? Yes. If Trump had named names, would the media still have linked him to the violence? Yes. Because they were linking him to the violence before he even said anything. Just because he didn't name names doesn't make him a racist. It just opened up the door for people to unfairly smear him as a racist. Let's look at the facts about the whole many sides debate.
You had both sides coming into the town armed to the teeth with clubs, with shields, with mace. The anti-fa people. The Black Lives Matter people, the white supremacists and the neo-Nazis, they wanted to rumble. And it's true. The whites were the ones that started this racist rally and it was a white racist that committed this murder, allegedly. The "New York Times" said and she was on the ground, the reporter, the hard left seemed as hate- filled as the alt-right. I saw a club wielding, anti-fa beating white nationalists.
The ACLU of Virginia not sure who provoked first, both sides were hitting at each other. And then one of the four people who were arrested was a left wing radical who punched a reporter in the face, female reporter. So, we can armchair President Trump's response all we want, but there is a lot of hypocrisy going on here. Hillary Clinton waited two weeks after Benghazi to call that terrorism. If Trump had blamed Charlottesville on a video, maybe he would have gotten a free pass.
President Obama waited four days during Ferguson while that city burned. And he was in Martha's Vineyard, having dinner to come out. And when he come out, he came out, he blamed both sides, the looters and the police. When Black Lives Matter activists executed NYPD people, and shot cops cold dead in the streets in Dallas, what did the President do? He didn't condemn Black Lives Matter. Black Lives Matter got invited to the White House.
And when he did speak about it, he goes, it's hard to untangle the motivations of the shooter. We don't want to assign blame from one kook to a larger national movement. Obama called terrorism workplace violence. So, it's hard to be lectured about word games from the left. And Scalise shooter, this guy a Bernie Sanders volunteer targeted Republican congressman with the weapon.
No one blamed Bernie Sanders for that but they want to lay this death at the doorstep of Donald Trump? It's disgraceful. This same people who are mad at President Trump for saying radical Islam now all of a sudden went on to say, white supremacy? It's totally ridiculous.
WATTERS: Jesse, you have got to make a distinction here between people who came and had torches in the night and started this thing.
WATTERS: I did. I say they were the ones that instigated the rally.
WILLIAMS: No, no to this kind of --
WATTERS: You can say no but they came to rumble, Juan. And the police did nothing. The police stood down. Who knows if the mayor told them to stand down. In any other city, you would have seen the police get out there and separate and divide people. Even the ACLU said that they stood by and watched this thing unfold.
WILLIAMS: I can't abide by that. That's just not relates.
GUILFOYLE: Okay. So, here is the problem.
WATTERS: You didn't see police in the video but --
GUILFOYLE: There is a couple of things that went wrong here, number one, yes, they should have shut it down and they should have been, you know, better prepared to make sure so that it didn't escalate to any kind of violence. If they knew they were going to have this protest, they should have made sure there is reports from reporters on the field that they didn't shut it down. It should have been shut down. It's unacceptable and there has been loss of life here.
Number two, the criticism is about the communications of the President. Because we sit here at this table and we criticize President Obama and past presidents if they weren't on message and if they did not denounce or come out and make a statement in time. And that's the criticism here is that where was the President's messaging? The communications and that there was a delay in it.
Not that he is personally responsible for it. Because people look to a president for guidance and for that kind of moral leadership to hear what the President has to say because the words do matter. We sat here and said that about President Obama. When has been, you know, delay of game to be fair.
WATTERS: To be fair. And perhaps Greg is right. It wasn't an unforced error. I'm not in the President's head, thank God. Perhaps the President was thinking, you know what? We don't have all the facts like Dana said. Let's just take a big picture approach. Because both sides are rumbling. I don't know who the driver was before I make a statement. And I don't think he was going to let the left wing violence off the hook. So, who knows what is going to happen.
GUILFOYLE: Obviously the President does not support people who are white supremacists and nationalists.
WATTERS: Obviously. And that is why he condemned everyone.
GUILFOYLE: Right. And everybody who knows him knows he's strongly against this.
GUTFELD: The difference between what happened on Saturday and what happened at standing rock or Portland last week with anti-fa beating up protesters. What happened in places like Auckland and in Berkeley, somebody died. So, that's what made this different. And so, we sit here and the media is tearing apart this event because some people, three people actually died.
There were violent events, something like 30 or 35 violent events in 2009 which were radical anti-fa protesters at standing rock. Except that happened in Ferguson and Baltimore. But this is different. Because it was -- this horrible act that makes it seem that it was entirely worse when, in fact, if you kept score of this, which is what people are doing, it's bad all around. And to sit here and just pretend that this thing is some kind of like right wing thing, this is an extremist thing. An extremist thing.
WILLIAMS: Well, let me just say, it's not.
GUTFELD: It is.
WILLIAMS: If you think, if you think --
GUTFELD: You don't remember the guy who killed five cops?
WILLIAMS: Hang on a second. First of all, that wasn't Black Lives Matter.
GUILFOYLE: Yes. We just received word from the Associated Press that President Trump has indeed arrived at Trump Tower. But there hasn't been a sighting of him. He may be there already. We will let you know if we get any video of that or any other further information. Go ahead, Juan.
WILLIAMS: So, I was just saying to Greg, this is not a policy difference. This is not me saying, oh, I believe in climate change. Greg saying, I don't believe. I think it is still a matter of contention. This is a matter of somebody the alt-right, the Nazis, right? Remember America battling Nazis.
GUTFELD: Don't talk down to me, Juan. I know who the Nazis are.
WILLIAMS: Okay. Well, I'm just telling you. I'll talk to you directly because it seems to me, Greg, that you can't say that a policy difference or a left versus right is equal of people who have targeted people. And direct relation to race given its history in this country and saying we are coming together with our torches in the night to stand up for the confederacy, for the alt-right for Robert --
GUTFELD: I say disavow all the dirt bags.
WATTERS: Yes, they're despicable.
GUTFELD: I don't know where the problem is with that.
WILLIAMS: I think so, if they're despicable and people stand to protest against them and then all of a sudden someone takes a car and runs them over, you would think the President of the United States would say, that is unacceptable. That is why I was so --
WATTERS: He did say it was unacceptable.
WILLIAMS: No. He didn't say that until today.
WATTERS: Juan? He didn't say it Saturday. He said it on Twitter on Saturday and he said it during his press conference on Saturday.
PERINO: I think that that's a couple of points here. Juan, I don't think that it's fair or I shouldn't say -- I don't think that it's right to just compare to past presidents because that should not be our bar. It's just like a moral thing and a human thing and you can judge each president on its own. I also think that the President needs to understand he would not pay a political price at all for calling out the alt-right.
These are people who are unfairly seeking safe harbor under his wing. And if the President didn't want to do it to protect himself, what about the party that he says that he wants to grow? Because now every Republican has to say, well, I'm not alt-right. The alt-right doesn't even believe in the constitution of the United States. These are people who have through sites like Breitbart for the last two years come after people.
If you have not been the target of some of the vile things that these people did with all their cocking and the pay frog. I remember I had to email Greg like, what are they even talking about? I didn't even know what it was. I thought that Nazis were something that we dealt with in the past. Of course, I knew little groups here and there but that America had a handle on it. And I think the President needs to understand, these people are trying to unfairly find safe harbor under his wing and he should absolutely come out and say, I disavow it completely.
You can call them out by name Richard Spencer, David Duke, whoever it is, he would actually benefit. And I do think he would have gotten credit for that if he would have done it on Saturday. And I think that he should get credit if he does it now.
GUILFOYLE: And he did do a good job when he came out with a statements today, in fact. All right. Excellent discussion.
Much more to come on the terror in Charlottesville. Some in the media are blaming President Trump for the violence. But Greg thinks news networks should be taking some blame. He will tell you why, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
GUTFELD: We know who is responsible for the death of Heather Heyer: Racist scum. But what role does the camera play and how the prior events unfolded? Because where there is a lens, there is always a show.
This melee over a statue, it wasn't a life or death battle but one for attention. A death sport fought in the coliseum of modern media. Two sides egged on for team sport purposes. It's the circus part of bread and circuses. And so many make their daily bread off the circus.
Had we all ignored this the march would have been forgotten fast. The left used to say, what if they had war, nobody came. Imagine that. No cameras, no commentary, no Antifa, the rally would have been a bunch of badly dressed guys handing out leaflets over by noon. The camera is Miracle Grow for mayhem. These Nazis are repugnant slugs who need shunning as well as their violent counterparts. But they won't be as long as the media races to capture the action, then virtue signals themselves to death afterwards. It's the newest reality show: A gruesome "American Gladiators"; political bum fights.
But we must state clearly this event isn't emblematic of something bigger. That melee isn't who we are today or microcosm of America. It's a diseased symptom of the larger body politic, one in which words are censored and violence excused. And if we don't recognize that is a sick aberration fertilized by attention, the temperature would drop and we could be rid of it. But sadly the media loves to say this represents a greater whole, which stews more rage.
Meanwhile Americans just hope North Korea doesn't bomb us. It's true. Nothing good ever comes from an angry mob. And that includes the media.
You know, Kimberly, when I was watching the coverage, I was screaming at the TV not simply about the event that was occurring but how intensity of the coverage wall-to-wall. Negatively impacts everything. So, when you are watching something, I saw this scene here 100 times.
GUILFOYLE: Sure. Uh-hum.
GUTFELD: Even when there was a lull. There would be a lull that went on for minutes but they would just show it over and over and over again until something else happened. And it was like, how does that not have an impact?
GUILFOYLE: Right. So, you're saying, they are basically put it on a loop --
GUTFELD: Yes.
GUILFOYLE: -- because it's good for television and it also helps to kind of create a false narrative because you think that that's going on at a consistent pace the whole time and then they wait for something else to throw it in. I mean, I think we have been pretty consistent in terms of talking about this, the role and impact media has in the way that it relays and covers the news.
GUTFELD: Exactly.
GUILFOYLE: And whether it sort of becomes part of the news itself. Nevertheless, this was a horrific event that occurred. I said about it on a lot of levels, about the racism, I feel we have come so much further as a country than this sick evil people that are so intolerant it's disgusting. And then also the way that we should learn better from past incidents about how to, you know, police this. But we all play a role in terms of how we talk about it, how we discuss it, and how the lens feeds it out to the public.
GUTFELD: You know, Dana, you know, there are live feeds right now of the protests outside of Trump Tower. They are not there to capture peace.
PERINO: No. Right. But that's what journalism is.
GUTFELD: Right.
PERINO: You don't go and cover all the planes that land safely at the airport.
GUTFELD: Exactly. Yes.
PERINO: But I also think that these people, the evil people over there doing this and then the counter protesters that were there trying to stop them and then the additional ones. They actually don't need the traditional media.
GUTFELD: Yes.
PERINO: You are watching traditional media. My parents are watching traditional media. These people are not. The cameras that they care about are the ones that are on their phones.
GUTFELD: Right.
PERINO: This is not being seen through a media filter.
GUILFOYLE: Yes.
PERINO: Like, it's older people that are watching us. These guys have never seen a nightly newscast since they were like 5-years-old and had to go spend a week at their grandparent's house for a week.
GUILFOYLE: Remember that?
PERINO: And so, the media to blame is really probably the social media but it's direct.
GUTFELD: Yes.
PERINO: So, they are not actually worried about CNN.
GUTFELD: But that proves the point that this is about spectacle and attention. When you look at the video, the people who aren't fighting are the people filming it, Jesse. Everybody has a camera and they are doing this because they are capturing it for their own blog or so they can post it to them, it's all about give me, give me more. I need more excitement.
GUILFOYLE: Soaking it up.
WATTERS: There is more bloggers and videographers than there were protesters. And I think 200 or 300 racists showed up to this rally in a country of 300 million. It doesn't make it a racist nation. Let's keep this into perspective. These people are French and they don't represent the rest of society. But the media relishes I think a little bit in this racist right wing rallies because it's the only visual proof they can say they can point to and say this is racism. And then they use the racism to hurt the Republican Party.
And they use it as a weapon against Republicans because so many Black people vote for Democrats and they want to make the other party look inhospitable. But meanwhile, over the weekend in Chicago, there were 39 shootings. There were nine deaths in Chicago. Did the media care? No. I think a month ago in Minnesota, Black Lives rally march, 21 police officers were injured and one had a fractured spinal cord. Didn't hear a lot about that.
Kate Steinle was murdered by an illegal alien felon who was deported five times, the media yawned. Neo-Nazi mows down an innocent woman and the media goes wall-to-wall. So, there is a lot of identity politics that steer this type of coverage and a lot of times it's designed to lay the blame on the foot of the President.
GUTFELD: Juan, you are an award winning journalist. I remember seeing you on Oprah, with -- Oprah, talking about censorship and music, and you felt strongly that the music was harmful. Ice tea, body count all that stuff. Do you believe that the media somehow contributes to this kind of event by focusing, inviting it more. By when people see a camera, they act differently?
WILLIAMS: Sure, I think we all do. But I think in this case, my question to you would be, shouldn't we, given the historical back drop, pay attention to the fringe. When the fringe is hateful and dangerous and spiteful and we say, you know, what? Let's not pay attention. Let's just pretend they are not there. And cameras stay away and journalists don't tell that story because it's an ugly story and really doesn't represent who I am and who we are as an American people. But if you do that Greg, you run the risk of them, the fringe spreading a message.
GUTFELD: Yes.
WILLIAMS: I mean, it is just like, you know, we were talking about President Trump's statement earlier. Well, guess what, you know, places like the daily storm are on their own media. They are praising it. They're saying, oh, that was a great statement. He didn't call us out. He didn't call us any names. So, they feel reinforced not by the coverage on NBC, CBS, or FOX News, they feel reinforced by what the President failed to do.
GUTFELD: Getting back to this idea of exposure being a contagion. We talked about this before whether, you know, the police don't like it when you report on teenage suicides because things like this are a contagion. When you give this sunlight, it grows, it doesn't necessarily expose and people go, it's terrible. There are a lot of people that find it exciting.
Give them meeting. It is just like ISIS literature. It's like, why did ISIS do propaganda videos, as disgusting as they were, it was because it attracted a certain element of society. You can argue that this stuff is exciting to people. It's definitely exciting to watch. Right?
WILLIAMS: Yes. But I mean, it is just like when we have conversations about ISIS and the terrorists. You know what we say we have got to focus on them and go them and pay attention to what President Trump would say, you know we would call them exactly what they are, guess what, he failed this weekend in his moment.
WATTERS: Both sides aren't responsible it is usually just the terrorist.
WILLIAMS: In this case, it was just the terrorist Jesse.
WATTERS: In this case --
WILLIAMS: No, Jesse. I don't know where you get your false equivalence.
WATTERS: Both sides are fighting each other. I'm not saying the Nazis didn't start the rally and didn't bring clubs. The other side brought clubs too, Juan.
GUTFELD: We were arguing the same point in the a-block. We have to move to the c block. The media spent the weekend blaming President Trump for the attack in and vilified over his initial response to the racist protest. Was the criticism fair? We'll debate that point again.
(LAUGHTER)
PERINO: My gosh.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WILLIAMS: Back now to the domestic terror attack in Charlottesville. That is how the Trump administration referred to it today. The President took a lot of heat over the last 48 hours for the initial response to the rationally motivated violence particularly from some folks in the media.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Failing to call out clearly the neo Nazis, the white supremacists, and the Ku Klux Klan members who instigated this violence is a major, major misstep.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It is not only the man, not the movement but anybody who points their fingers at Mexicans and Muslims shares responsibility.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Shared responsibility. The fact is through that campaign he blew all kinds of whistles that those of us who grew up in the Jim Crow south like I did. I recognized immediately it was just calling out to these white supremacists who then felt empowered by it.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You can make the case that Saturday was the worst day of the Trump presidency.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WILLIAMS: The media heard from Mr. Trump today and tonight he tweeted, quote: made additional remarks on Charlottesville and realized once again that the fake news media will never be satisfied, truly bad people, end quote. What do you think, Kimberly?
GUILFOYLE: Look, I think that he is frustrated, because he knows in his heart who he is. What he stands for and how he really wanted to focus on the economy and the working men and women across this country the he felt were left behind.
He feels personally probably dismayed. And hurt that people would think that this was something that was, you know, in his heart or that he wouldn't condemn. So basically this just comes down to communication and making sure that when something like this happens, and you are the President of the United States, that you and your team immediately get out there and do the right thing. I thought what he had to say today was outstanding and important and people wanted to hear that. The whole quarrel is with the timing of it.
WILLIAMS: Obviously you had people in the Republican Party, Jesse, Senator McCain, Senator Sasse, Jeff flake. Even Orrin Hatch Corey Gardner and Ted Cruz what he said Saturday was just inadequate?
WATTERS: Yes a lot of Republican disagrees with President's handling of the situation they can do what they want. The President can do what he wants. The President is going to take a PR hit for the short-term with this but I'm sure he will bounce back. The media spent a year calling President Trump a Nazi. So then a Nazi commits a murder. The media tries to make Trump the accessory for the murder. It's just not fair. Also, if you have hundreds of thousands of radical Islamic terrorists, that apparently have nothing to do with this Islam, according to the left, then how does one kook racists have anything to do with Donald Trump?
The media begged Donald Trump to name names. He did. And then they said oh, he read it off a teleprompter. Oh, he didn't take questions. Oh, he bragged about the economy. In way he can't win. He will be blamed for everything. He gets blamed for transsexual suicide. He gets blamed for people getting divorced and he gets blamed for global warming. I do fear - I hear people in the media talk about Donald Trump like is he subhuman, like he is trying to wipe off people from the face of the earth, like he is Hitler. I fear some kook is going to listen to this and do something crazy.
WILLIAMS: Let's hope not. Dana, when you hear Cokie Roberts, Wink nods, dog whistles to a southern audience.
PERINO: Actually this is what I took from her to listen to somebody who grew up very differently from how I did. I think that is interesting to listen to. And these young people that were there in Charlottesville probably haven't had the benefit of listening to somebody who grew up that way. I also think this goes back to a little bit like when this Scalise shooting happened, President Trump didn't say ok, Bernie Sanders, or the left like you are responsible for that. That is inappropriate. Personal responsibility is something conservatives believe in. So that is personal responsibility for what you do and for what you say or you don't say.
The President benefits from something no other President has had except for President Obama. And that is the ability to speak unfiltered, to Americans. And so he can do that. He didn't have to take questions today. Although I think he would have benefited from doing so. He said he is going to have a press conference on Friday. Should have done it, but he has that ability to speak unfiltered. If he wants to show his true heart, I mean that is one of the ways to do that.
WILLIAMS: But he didn't do that did he, Greg, not on social media, not over the weekend. He didn't really speak on the issue until today. Then you had Ivanka Trump his daughter who said very clearly in the meanwhile over social media racism unacceptable.
GUTFELD: I'm getting the sense, Juan this is a point that you are going to be hammering over and over again for the next 17 years. The intensity of the focus on this thing is unbelievable when you compare it in the context of other things that have gone on and what other Presidents have done, I'm sorry, but we have to say that, it wasn't like this when President Obama took his time responding to other things.
Look, if all you see is racism, when you think of Donald Trump. If all you think is racism when you think of Republicans, when you all you think is racism when you think of the people who voted for Trump. Your confirmation bias makes your opinion pointless. That is the way you see it.
WILLIAMS: What if you don't think that?
GUTFELD: From what I'm gathering when I'm watching the news when Anna Navarro says something like, he is not human, that is like irrational. There is a lot of irrational -- there are rational responses to this. Rational response might be he could have done a better job. He -- you know, maybe he should have said this. He should have said that but, remember, he gets called out for calling, you know, radical Islam and so now they are mad he didn't call out white racism.
WILLIAMS: I think he gets called out for calling Mexicans and racists and thieves and suggestive about Muslims.
GUTFELD: That is an old chess match that rings up a lot.
WILLIAMS: It not a chess game, it is a real fact.
GUTFELD: That was a sloppy explanation, but there is always something that we have to go back and explain it to you and takes up another five minutes.
WILLIAMS: I get it. We don't want to confound you.
GUTFELD: You are not, believe me, Juan.
WILLIAMS: We are learning more about the accused Charlottesville's killer. Plus, James Alex Field Jr., he made his first court appearance today. Find out what happened straight ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PERINO: Welcome back. Today the man suspected of killing Heather Heyer and injuring 19 others made his first court appearance and will remain in jail. Let's bring in Doug McKelway, he is live in Charlottesville, he has been there and he got all the story details, Doug?
DOUG MCKELWAY, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Hi Dana. There is a growing chorus of voices here in Charlottesville, that the police did not act proactively to quell the violence in the early stages before it got out of hand. Late of the today the police chief of the Charlottesville police department Al- Thomas held a press conference in which he vehemently denied those accusations.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
AL THOMAS, CHARLOTTESVILLE POLICE CHIEF: Early morning hours on Saturday Virginia State Police were positioned in and around and across the street from Emancipation Park in order to readily observe and monitor the actions of the crowd and respond as quickly as possible when emergencies arose.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MCKELWAY: But that reassurance is falling on the deaf ears of the ACLU. As we know they are normally aligned with leftist causes, but in this case they took the side of the alt right movement. They filed suit against the city's decision to try to move this protest out to a suburban park. They won that case and so the case, rather the rally was held at Emancipation Park downtown. This morning, on "National Public Radio," Virginia Governor McAuliffe blasted the ACLU for in effect contributing to the violence by winning that court case and today the ACLU fired back at McAuliffe and the police in a written statement which read, quote: the policing on Saturday was not effective in preventing violence. I was there and brought concerns directly to the secretary of public safety and the head of the Virginia state police. They did not respond.
In fact, law enforcement was standing passively by, seeming to be waiting for violence to take place so that they would have grounds to declare an emergency. Of course, Dana by declaring an emergency they could have cleared that park out which is precisely what they did cleared out of protesters and the alt right movement. In other developments today the suspect in this case James Alex Fields made his first court appearance via video from a jail. He was dressed in a black and white striped uniform.
He answered yes, sir when asked if he understood the proceedings. The public defender's office was expected to represent him, because a relative of one of the public defenders was at the wreckage seen on Saturday, they recused himself that he will be represented by another attorney, a second hearing coming up on August 25th, back to you in New York.
PERINO: All right. Doug, thank you so much. Kimberly that is quite an accusation from the ACLU, but Tucker Carlson on his show talking about what happened with the police. I guess we have to wait to find out some answers?
GUILFOYLE: Absolutely. I think it definitely warrants an investigation. Because why is it that this was allowed to escalate? They knew what they were dealing with allow these two groups to come in to fight. To me, it's acting in conscious disregard of a known risk where very likely the great bodily injury or death could occur. That is what they did. I want to hear from the governor there McAuliffe and say what did you know? Why did you allow this to continue and stand-down? I mean, shocking myself right now, that the ACLU I think has a very good point, because there was violence expected and they could have shut it down. Why is it that the police were told to, I guess, it looks like told or backed off and then look what happened in the aftermath. It's very upsetting to me.
PERINO: The suspect, Greg, did not -- was not granted bail. I think that sounds right.
GUTFELD: Yes, he killed one person but his intent was to kill many more. The only thing that prevented that was the car in front of him. If the car had not been there, there probably would have been dozens. What I find troubling about the law is how the number of fatalities, the fewer they are that somehow diminishes in somebody's head intent. So by pure luck incompetence that saves you. I think they should also eliminate the number of fatalities just this guy wanted to kill 50 or 100 people. He got one because he was saved by a car. That should not matter. He should be treated as though -- well, he should be dead.
GUILFOYLE: Let him out on bail to run somebody else over?
PERINO: We should mention, Jesse, there are a couple people who were injured that are actually in critical condition right now.
WATTERS: That is right. Also the two police officers who died in the hospital crash. This guy is a looser. He is a loner. He is a want to be a neo Nazi, now he is going to be a Neo-Nazi in prison with his gang, because he will be in there a very long time.
PERINO: May he won't be protective too much, Juan?
WILLIAMS: I mean one of the issues of the ACLU was this park is the home of the statue of Robert E. Lee. It was previously called Lee Park when you hear emancipation. That is a name change. So I think the ACLU should have been saying, you know what, we don't want this protest here at this site where ignition is so quick. I thought that is why they should have done it.
PERINO: All right, some final thoughts in just a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WATTERS: Back now with continuing coverage of Charlottesville and the deadly aftermath. We are going to take it around the table with some final thoughts. I will just begin first. First, Trump probably. If he had to do it again, probably would do a do-over and name names, because what's happening now is completely out of control. The smear merchants are also out of control. He is being unfairly maligned, but you would have to expect that and I understand that. Then, third, I think the police and mayor of Charlottesville do have blood on their hands. There is dereliction of duty with what happened. There should have been a massive amount of law enforcement there on the scene and the minute blows were exchanged they should have come in and separated the groups instantaneously and they have a lot of explaining to do. Let's go around, Greg.
GUTFELD: Big cities are really good -- we went to two conventions and no one ever saw the other side. We were so separated.
GUILFOYLE: Remember that?
GUTFELD: Big cities know how to do this and sometimes small cities are inexperienced. The same way after those five police officers was killed in Dallas. You saw amazing coming together of the police force and the people to pay respect to the fallen and denounce radical violence at the same time. And to make sure that these three individuals do not die in vain, I think that we must do the same thing here. Denounce the violence, come together, and treat hateful ideas the same way a company views an infected product. It's just something that you have to be aware of and just stay away from and that is it.
WATTERS: Dana Perino?
PERINO: Obviously there is criticism of lots of different factions here, including the media. But I do think it's worth pointing out that Cheryl the reporter that you mentioned in the a-block. She is a "New York Times" reporter. She actually worked on Saturday. She was there on the ground. She was eyes and ears. She was a witness, and she got so much heat from the left. She is tweeting out her thoughts that she had seen them. And the left got mad at her she said the black lives matter group was hate- filled. So -- she backtrack and I just think that we should celebrate the fact that there were journalists on the ground that are willing to be there and to tell the story to us.
WATTERS: Kimberly 15 seconds.
GUILFOYLE: Obviously we denounce any kind of racism and bigotry. Our country is bigger and better than that let's come together.
WATTERS: Close it out, Juan.
WILLIAMS: I think it is very important moment for Republicans, because I think Republican are very uptight about this issue of race. I think it is important to understand this is not about someone condemning the Republican Party. There is a part of the base that the Republicans need to stand up and speak against.
WATTERS: That is right. Heather Heyer our thoughts and prayers go out to your family. Stay with us. The five returns in a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
GUILFOYLE: Welcome back to "The Five." we want to send our condolences to the families of the victims killed in Charlottesville. We wish all of those who were injured a very speedy recovery. We want to thank you for joining us here tonight, continuing coverage and analysis on the attack on "Hannity" up next.
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