Since the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, President Trump has been curiously deferential to racists. First he deflected blame from them, arguing that there was bigotry “on many sides.” Then he said “very fine people” had gathered with neo-Nazis to protest the city’s removal of a Confederate statue. Then, at a rally in Phoenix last week, he said protesters who sought to remove such statues were “trying to take away our culture.