Cities Bracing For Rallies: White Nationalists Emboldened After Trump Remarks.
KATE BOLDUAN, CNN HOST: Breaking news: Steve Bannon speaking out amid outrage over President Trump's remarks on Charlottesville, telling the "American Prospect" magazine this about Democrats. I read the quote: I want them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats. So, what do voters who supported President Trump last year think about his remarks? Brynn Gingras is OUTFRONT.</s>EDDIE PLATT, TRUMP SUPPORTER: In every action, there is a reaction.</s>BRYNN GINGRAS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Trump supporter Eddie Platt agrees with the president. Both sides are to blame for the deadly unrest in Charlottesville, Virginia.</s>PLATT: There is no clear thing on who was the first provocation.</s>GINGRAS: His view is not unique in Paris, Kentucky, just 14 miles outside of Lexington.</s>JEROME HARNEY, TRUMP SUPPORTER: Two wrongs don't make a right. You got the left and the right in the country. Well, I don't -- whatever happened to the middle?</s>MIKE SEXTON, TRUMP SUPPORTER: There was fault on both sides, but --</s>GINGRAS (on camera): But both sides, right? One side, he calls the alt left.</s>SEXTON: Right.</s>GINGRAS: Those people are fighting for equality. The alt-right fighting for white supremacy to take over the country as a white-only America.</s>SEXTON: They have a right to protest the white supremacists.</s>GINGRAS: Even with carrying torches and shields. What do you think about that?</s>SEXTON: Whatever they carry. I mean, they have a right to protest.</s>KIMBERLY HOWARD, TRUMP SUPPORTER: How can you hold one person responsible for all the fighting? It's what people -- I think it's just what people believe in and that's what they're taught.</s>GINGRAS (voice-over): Here in Bourbon County, voters overwhelmingly supported Trump in last year's election. They are concerned about racism in this country, but they don't think the president is at fault for any of the divisiveness.</s>HARNEY: Some of the best friends I've got are black people. I served on the city commissioner for 17 years, the black people here elected me.</s>GINGRAS (on camera): But you say -- you say some of the people -- closest friends are black people, right? But there are people in Virginia marching saying that black people can't replace them.</s>HARNEY: The ones that can't get their thirsts quench are making the black people look bad. Those white people that put swastika on their arm and marched are</s>HOWARD: There's going -- can turn into a war between the blacks and the whites and</s>GINGRAS: You think a civil war could happen.</s>HOWARD: I mean, honestly, I thought that.</s>GINGRAS (voice-over): As for white supremacy -- (on camera): Do you think the president has given them more of a voice?</s>SEXTON: I don't think so. I don't think so. I think the president is in a tough position.</s>HARNEY: If they put people back to work, that alone will solve a lot of problems. Poverty breeds a lot of trouble.</s>PLATT: He needs to stand up and call these people out by what they are. He needs to say this is not going to be tolerated in the United States.</s>GINGRAS: Is there anything the president could do where you draw the line?</s>SEXTON: You know, again, if he would -- if he would come in and say, hey, I'm not letting you protest. I'm not letting you -- you white supremacists, this is not going to happen anymore. Or I'm going to not let you people that are protesting for equality, I'm not letting that happen anymore. What would that do for our rights as the United States in this country? This is a melting pot. This is the United States of America. We all need to come together.</s>GINGRAS: Two of the people we talked to are registered Democrats. All of them are business owners. Jerome Harney, he's owned his barbershop here on Main Street for more than 60 years. He wears a tie to work every single day. These people say they love their country, and that's why they respect the presidency. But seven months into this administration, they say they see some problems, Kate, but not enough to sway their support.</s>BOLDUAN: Fascinating look. Brynn, thanks so much. I really appreciate it. OUTFRONT with me now, former special adviser to President Obama, Van Jones, and the host of "The Ben Ferguson Show", Ben Ferguson. Van, what do you make of what you heard right there?</s>VAN JONES, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, I think that people are struggling to try to make sense of a very confusing situation. I do agree that people do have the right to protest and they also -- we have the right to try to make judgments and discernments about what kinds of protests actually push us closer towards democracy and towards inclusion and toward the dream of our founders and Dr. King and what protests pull us away from that. And I think that obviously Nazis -- I mean, the idea we have to debate whether Nazis and white supremacists and Klan members are protesting for things that we are in favor of in America is kind of shocking.</s>BOLDUAN: Let me ask you real quick about this, also, Van, because it is just coming in. This interview that Steve Bannon gave and the quote is, I want to get your take, he says: The longer they talk about identity politics, Democrats, I got them. I want them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on racism and we go with economic nationalism, we crush the Democrats. Is he right?</s>JONES: Listen, I think that this is something that liberals and Democrats should take very, very seriously. There is a way that we can sometimes get tricked into drawing our circle too small both in terms of constituency and concern. So, we're only concerned about those groups that have been historically marginalized because of race, religion or sexuality, and we sometimes seem like we're crouching down over a broken status quo, only concerned about those folks. We're passionately concerned about those folks, but we're also concerned about the people who are newly marginalized in this economy, including white male workers. If we don't -- if we're not clear about that and a job agenda for everybody, we are setting ourselves up for another -- for round two of what happened in 2016.</s>BOLDUAN: Fascinating. You know, Ben, also in this interview with Steve Bannon, he called the far right a collection of clowns. He dismissed them as irrelevant.</s>BEN FERGUSON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I think a lot of them are irrelevant. I think the majority of Republicans or conservatives or people that voted for Donald Trump do not consider any of these people anywhere close to them and that's one of the reasons why --</s>BOLDUAN: Right. But the guy that run Breitbart, that coming from him, that's pretty rich.</s>FERGUSON: Well, I don't think it's rich. I think if you look at Steve Bannon, there is a lot of people that tried to turn him into a white nationalists and they overplayed their hand. I think he thinks they're a bunch of kooks and crazies, and people try to turn him into by playing, and a lot of people did this during the campaign, the politics of racism were played, where people were trying to imply that the president was a racist or Steve Bannon was the core of the white supremacists and the alt-right movement, and they overplayed that. And I think what you heard him say there is what he truly believes. The majority of conservatives think the alt-right is a bunch of racist, bigot, inbred idiots, and they don't look at them as being part of the conservative movement. I don't think there should be surprised that Steve Bannon said it that way.</s>BOLDUAN: Van, are you surprised?</s>JONES: Well, I just want to say that I don't think that people have overplayed their hand with regard to Bannon. You know, he's been, you know, championing this book, I'm not going to mention the name of this book, but it is a book that is an atrocious racist text denounced by everybody around the world and he quotes from it quite often. So, Bannon has put himself in a situation where reasonable people can conclude he has way too much sympathy for white nationalism and for racism in addition to his economic populism. And so, I think that's -- again, we're going to have to start getting nuanced here. Everybody just wants to run and starts screaming. There are aspects of the Trump program, the economic program when it comes to infrastructure, when it comes to, you know, trying to get Americans working again, when it comes to frankly standing up to the elite in Washington, D.C., that I think are positive. The problem is it's always marbled with a bunch of toxic crap that people come out and try to defend. And I think we're in a situation where the pain of the people in red states and blue states, there is common pain. There is no common purpose yet. And the president is making us more divided. We should be turning to each other, not on each other. The president is siding with the people who are trying to divide us. If he wants us to come together there are responsible conservatives, including on the screen with me tonight who would be great allies in that, but the president has not been an ally yet.</s>BOLDUAN: Ben, on the issue of race and racism, it is something that former Republican presidents have very successfully tackled head-on. You don't have to look too far back. I mean, here's Reagan and George H.W. Bush.</s>RONALD REAGAN, FORMER PRESIDENT: If I were speaking to them instead of to you, I would say to them, you are the ones who are out of step with our society. You are the ones who willfully violate the meaning of the dream that is America. And this country, because of what it stands for, will not stand for your conduct.</s>GEORGE H.W. BUSH, FORMER PRESIDENT: When someone has so recently endorsed Nazism, it is inconceivable that such a person can legitimately aspire to leadership in a leadership role in a free society.</s>BOLDUAN: You don't hear Reagan and Bush saying there are two sides of the issue, Ben. It's not hard. Why is it hard for the president?</s>FERGUSON: I think, one, it's because he doesn't understand the politics necessarily of what you have to do as the president. I think he's more of a guy that has the water cooler conversation of, man, did you see that big fight that happened this weekend? Got, that got ugly. That's what a lot of Americans talked like after they saw it because they watched it on TV and he comes out and he says -- hold on.</s>FERGUSON: I know, but let me finish my point because it is important. I think what you understand when you're a politician, especially when you're the president, is there are certain things that you have to come out and always get them right. On an issue of racism, that's a perfect example. It's very simple. Do you love your kids? You answer quickly yes. Do you love your wife? Yes. Is it wrong to hit a woman? It's totally wrong to hit a woman. Is racism wrong? Yes. The KKK wrong. Those are certain simple things that politicians understand that you walk out there and it's very clear in your messaging and it should be a short clear message. It should not be a long conversation. It should be condemning the KKK, the white nationalists, the neo-Nazis. Whereas, I think a lot of Americans are OK with having a bigger conversation. But they're not OK with seeing a leader that might have that same conversation they're having around the water cooler. And I think that's something the president has to get right moving forward. Otherwise, these types of issues are going to take away from the other things he wants to accomplish, which is have a great economy, have better infrastructure. No one is paying attention to infrastructure, no one is paying attention to lower unemployment numbers right now, which are amazing, and a lot of Americans are back at work right now, which is great for all Americans. But on these simple issues, I think somebody has really got to get in the air and say, Mr. President, there's certain moments where you have to have a conversation that a leader has, instead of a conversation the average guy might have at work the next morning.</s>BOLDUAN: Yes, on these issues, on these issues, like when you say those things, do you hit a woman? No. Do you like the KKK? No. That's not just a politician who should have a simple answer, that's a human that should have the simple answer, I feel like.</s>FERGUSON: I'm with you there. I'm just saying when he comes out, there is a lot of people at work that watch these protests, whether that or the Dallas shooting that happened and there are a lot people that sit there and they see these conversations and they have more blunt conversations about it.</s>BOLDUAN: Someone died. Someone died. This wasn't someone got a fat lip. Someone died.</s>FERGUSON: Kate, I'm not disagreeing with your point there. I'm not disagreeing with your point there. I agree with you. But sometimes we try to make things so divisive. There is a reality right now in this country that the extreme left and the extreme right and take this out of someone dying. I'm saying in general all over the country, there are people that want a race war right now, and I think we have to be able to have a conversation about the responsibility of elected officials and people locally and the police and everything else to make sure we don't play into the hands of the white nationalists or the KKK or the hands into the extreme left that genuinely want a big fight in the streets. They want a war and we have to have a real conversation about that.</s>BOLDUAN: Van, if the president going forward gets the answer right, does that bring comfort to you?</s>JONES: Listen, I, you know, tried. I think, as much as anybody on the left to try to keep an open mind and open heart and open eyes for any aspects of this presidency that might be remotely praise-worthy. It gets harder every day. And sometimes, you know, when you have another hostage video when the people looks like he's been frog marched out there to read some statement somebody else wrote, that's not going to work. I want to hear the president be as passionate about the loss of a human life as he is about the loss of the statue. I mean, he was passionate about the loss of a statue. He was more passionate about the loss of a statue than the loss of a human life, you know, this week. That kind of stuff I think is awful. You know, Ben is I think making a good effort to try to balance stuff that's really, really tough to balance here. What I would say this is -- you're starting to see now I think a false equivalence being generalized that you have violent people on the left, violent people on the right and we kind of have to deal with violence overall. I do think that there are some elements on the left that are very troubling and very disturbing. But I do not see the level of organized, you know, terrorism, basically, that I saw in that city. I talked to people on the ground in that city who said that they were literally because -- you know, all we saw was the fistfights and the flash points.</s>BOLDUAN: Yes.</s>JONES: But when that wasn't going on, you had armed Nazis going around intimidating people, shoving people, threatening people, saying they are going to lynch people to -- I mean, for hours and hours and hours. I haven't seen anything like that yet on the left. And I think we've got to make sure to distinguish between a terrorist movement, a white supremacist terrorist movement, which I'm seeing now building on the right and some of these -- some people on the left with whom we have some concerns. We've got to be concerned about them, but they are not organizing on the level you're seeing with this dirty right movement.</s>BOLDUAN: Yes, and just to be clear, guys, you know, stopped being about statues the moment people started walking around with swastikas. I think that could be pretty much agreed universally. Great to see you. Thank you very much. Let's continue this conversation.</s>FERGUSON: Thanks.</s>BOLDUAN: OUTFRONT next, few Republican members of Congress aren't eager to be TV tonight. One of them who is, is calling out President Trump. He's my guest. And another major city bracing itself tonight for a battle over a Confederate monument. Are hate groups using that fight as a recruiting tool?