McAuliffe emerges from Charlottesville crisis as a counterbalance to Trump
By Laura Vozzella August 22 at 6:23 PM
On the day that white nationalists and counterprotesters clashed violently over a Confederate statue in his state, Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe spoke the words that President Trump would not.
“I have a message to all the white supremacists and the Nazis who came into Charlottesville today. Our message is plain and simple: Go home. .?.?. There is no place for you here, there is no place for you in America,” a stricken-looking McAuliffe said on national television.
As images of mayhem from Charlottesville were beamed continuously around the world, President Trump gave his now much-criticized condemnation of “hatred violence and bigotry on many sides, on many sides” — an equivocation he repeated days later, to the dismay of Republicans and Democrats alike.
The bigotry and bloodshed that consumed Charlottesville was McAuliffe’s first national crisis, one that unfolded as he is getting ready to leave office. It tested McAuliffe’s ability to keep order while it threatened his work to rebrand the one-time capital of the Confederacy as an inclusive, multicultural state.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/mcauliffe-emerges-from-charlottesville-crisis-as-a-counterbalance-to-trump/2017/08/22/6bf8d0ba-81fa-11e7-ab27-1a21a8e006ab_story.html
