So, like everyone else, my jaw has just been on the floor about Trump's statements about Charlottesville.

I suppose there's no use being surprised by this though.  Trump knows exactly what he's doing.

He already knows he'll never pick up any points with the Left, so he's deliberately pandering to the Right here.

Trump knows, of course, that both sides were not equally at fault for the violence.  But he also knows that his only hope of political survival lies in keeping his base happy, and so there's nothing to be gained by making any concessions to the Left.

I predicted this would happen back in January.  To quote myself:

When Bush won in 2000, and saw how much liberals hated him, he (and his stage managers) decided it was useless to try a strategy of reconciling with liberals.
Instead, their strategy became to appeal to their conservative base, and just concentrate on keeping the Republicans really happy.
If the Republican base could be counted on to come out in big numbers in 2004, and if the country was relatively stable, then the fact that we liberals were fuming mad about everything didn't matter at all.
Which was why, right from day one, Bush started appointing a very conservative, very ultra-right cabinet, and started pursuing a very ultra-right agenda.
And it worked for him.
There are ample signs already that Trump is going to be using the same playbook for the next 4 years.  He's already started making a lot of symbolic gestures that show his strategy is going to be giving red-meat to his conservative base, and screwing over the liberals.

This is also a very old strategy.  Nixon used the same strategy back in 1970.  After the FBI had murdered Black leaders, instead of condemning the murders, Nixon praised the FBI more.
Nixon knew it would play well to his base, and indeed it got him re-elected in 1972.

The fact that it was blatantly wrong....well, who cares about these things in politics?

To see the footage of this, watch the video below from the 30:00 mark:



Trump is doing the same thing now.  We can cry and scream about it all we want, but it won't stop him from following this strategy.  He knows who his base is, and he knows this is how to keep them happy.
And if liberals get screaming mad about it, all the better.  (His base loves it when liberals get impotently angry).
The way things are going now, we may well be headed for a Trump victory in 2020.