Sen. Brian Schatz: Trump Is ‘Not My President’

The Hawaii Democrat tweeted, “As a Jew, as an American, as a human, words cannot express my disgust and disappointment.”

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Hawaii’s senior senator on Tuesday said Donald Trump is not his president.

Brian Schatz, a Democrat, sent out the angry tweet Monday afternoon in response to President Trump’s statement Tuesday that “both sides” were responsible for the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend.

“As a Jew, as an American, as a human, words cannot express my disgust and disappointment,” Schatz tweeted. “This is not my President.”

Schatz’s tweet was reported in publications as liberal as Huffington Post and as conservative as Washington Examiner.

Senator Brian Schatz in HCB office. 31 may 2017
Sen. Brian Schatz in Civil Beat’s office in May. He has strong views about the current occupant of the White House. Cory Lum/Civil Beat

Schatz and his staff did not respond to calls from Civil Beat, so we’ll have to rely on news reports and the senator’s own Twitter feed, where he vented his anger.

The senator was among many people across the country responding in shock to Trump’s most recent comments on the violence in Charlottesville during a press conference Tuesday at Trump Tower in New York.

On Saturday, he denounced hatred and violence on “many sides,” seeming to assign blame equally to counter-demonstrators as well as hate groups protesting the proposed removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.

He waited until Monday, after criticism from both Republicans and Democrats,  to specifically name the groups he was condemning — the KKK, neo-Nazis and white supremacists.

On Tuesday, he was back to assigning partial blame to those protesting the white supremacists.

“I think there’s blame on both sides,” Trump charged in a fiery Trump Tower press conference. He added, “There are two sides to a story.”

“Not all of those people were neo-Nazis, believe me. Not all of those people were white supremacists by any stretch,” Trump continued. “Those people were also there because they wanted to protest the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee.”

Like Schatz, his congressional colleagues see things differently than Trump.

“It’s clear that this President does not serve all Americans,” U.S. Sen. Mazie Hirono said via her Twitter account. “Bringing our country together will be up to each of us; he will be no help.”

Hawaii Congresswoman Colleen Hanabusa, had this to say through her Twitter account: “ . . . defiant, indignant and disgraceful.”

One person responding favorably to Trump’s comments was David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard.

“Thank you President Trump for your honesty & courage to tell the truth about #Charlottesville & condemn the leftist terrorists in BLM/Antifa,” CNN reported, adding that the full tweet was from an account that is not verified by Twitter “but appears to represent Duke and features videos apparently posted by and of him.”

For more on the reaction to Trump’s latest incendiary remarks, check out the #NotMyPresident hashtag on Twitter.

 

Material from the Associated Press was included in this story.

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