‘Rocket Man’ and some ‘very fine’ neo-Nazis in Charlottesville

Donald Trump’s feud with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un would escalate further in the summer of 2017, with the president reacting to the latest defiant missile launch by asking on Twitter on Independence Day: “Does this guy have anything better to do with his life?”

For a man who would later prove to have spent no fewer than one day in five of his presidency on the golf course, this was rich.

Trump’s rhetoric would become even more waspish on 8 August after Pyongyang said it would subject the US to “thousands-fold” revenge for its latest round of diplomatic sanctions.

“North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States,” he countered. “They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.”

The insults continued at the UN on 19 September when Trump derided his opponent before the General Assembly with a new Elton John-derived nickname: “Rocket Man is on a suicide mission for himself and for his regime.”

Kim countered by expressing confidence he would “surely and definitely tame the mentally deranged US dotard”. The North Korean leader also called Trump “a frightened dog” and a “gangster fond of playing with fire”.

While their war of words would rumble on for several more months – as his ex-oilman secretary of state Rex Tillerson and the wider international community called in vain for calm – Trump faced a new crisis at home.

On the weekend of 11 and 12 August, a “Unite the Right” rally was staged in Charlottesville, Virginia, which saw an unholy alliance of neo-Nazis, white nationalists, alt-right populists, “neo-Confederate” militia and the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) come together to march under Swastika banners and tiki torches and chant racist slogans in opposition to the planned removal of a statue of Robert E Lee from a city park.  

Their provocations were stared down by anti-fascist counter-demonstrators and fighting ensued, with at least 33 people injured and 11 arrested as the disturbing scenes played out across social media.

The climax of the clashes came at 1.45pm on the Saturday afternoon, when James Alex Fields Jr,  20, drove his Dodge Challenger into a crowd of left-wing activists, sending bodies flying and killing 32-year-old local Heather Heyer.

Fields Jr would later be convicted for the murder of Heyer and injuring others. He was sentenced to life in prison plus 419 years.

Pressured to respond and condemn the event’s organisers, Trump spoke from his holiday home in Bedminster, New Jersey, and said instead: “We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides.”

The emphasis on “many sides” – apparently the brainwave of chief strategist Steve Bannon, reluctant to alienate far-right support – caused a fresh outcry, with senior Republicans calling on the president to issue a second statement more specifically condemning neo-Nazism.

Veteran Utah senator Orrin Hatch tweeted: “My brother didn't give his life fighting Hitler for Nazi ideas to go unchallenged here at home.”

Finally persuaded to clarify his stance by chief of staff John Kelly on 14 August, Trump reluctantly returned to the podium: “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.”

This still failed to convince and the president made matters worse a day later when he uttered one of the most notorious phrases of his tenure by telling a reporter: “You had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides.”

In all, more than 60 members of Congress – both Republican and Democrat – denounced Trump’s pandering but their opposition did nothing to change his mind and the tragic episode only served as a prelude to the “culture war” narrative he would push three years later in response to the Black Lives Matter protests that erupted following the police killing of George Floyd in May 2020.

Charlottesville did see Bannon forced out on 18 August and, perhaps most significantly, provided ex-vice president Joe Biden with the inspiration he needed to run against Trump in 2020.

“The president of the United States assigned a moral equivalence between those spreading hate and those with the courage to stand against it. And in that moment, I knew the threat to this nation was unlike any I had ever seen in my lifetime,” Biden said in the video promoting his candidacy in April 2019.

Filmmaker Spike Lee would also use the shocking footage of Fields Jr ramming his car into the crowd in the closing moments of BlacKkKlansman (2018), making the case for the atrocity being the defining incident of the Trump era and the inevitable consequence of the president sowing seeds of division.

Trump, uniquely unable to admit fault or acknowledge his mistakes at the best of times, went on to provoke further outrage that summer by toying with the citizenship status of “Dreamers” (American-born children of parents that had originally arrived in the country illegally); pardoning brutal Arizona lawman Joe Arpaio; and picking a fight with NFL players who followed quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s example by kneeling during the national anthem before games in protest at racial injustice.

In a lighter moment from those dark months, 11-year-old Frank Giacco was invited to the White House on 15 September to mow the lawn, having written to offer his landscaping gardening services for free.

The president wandered outside to express his thanks but couldn’t make himself heard over the noise of Giacco’s mower chewing up the grass.

One of the great memes of our time was born.

Read the full Trump Review series here