Charlottesville response

Jeh Johnson: I hope Trump learns from his Charlottesville response

By LOUIS NELSON

Former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said Friday that the nation depends on its president to reduce tension, not increase it, in the hours and days after tragedies like the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, earlier this month.

Johnson, in an interview with MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” said he hopes President Donald Trump can learn from his Charlottesville response – which was widely rebuked across the political spectrum – or at least learn to lean on others when faced with similar situations in the future.

“Charlottesville was a real tragedy,” Johnson said. “Charlottesville was an alarming situation, and in that type of situation, we depend upon our president to bring us together, to lower the temperature, not raise the temperature. And so I hope that this president has the ability to learn from episodes like that or at least call upon people for advice about how to deal with complicated situations like Charlottesville.”

Trump, in both his initial response to the white supremacist marches in Charlottesville and at a press conference days after the incidents, said that blame for the resulting violence should be shared between the hate groups and the demonstrators who had gathered to protest their presence. At a press conference inside Trump Tower, Trump said there had been “very fine people” on both sides of the clashes.

The president revisited the issue this week at a Tuesday rally in Phoenix, where he insisted that the media had been unfair in its coverage of his response to the Charlottesville rally. Before a raucous crowd of thousands of supporters, Trump reread his initial statement, omitting the portion where he said there had been hatred, bigotry and violence “on many sides.”

Following that rally, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper called Trump’s Phoenix remarks, in which he also criticized the media and Arizona’s Republican senators, “objectionable on so many levels.” Clapper told CNN that “I don’t know when I’ve listened and watched something like this from a president that I found more disturbing” and questioned the president’s fitness for office. He said the notion that Trump has access to the nation’s nuclear arsenal is “pretty damn scary.”

Asked about those remarks, Johnson praised his former Obama administration colleague but stopped short of seconding Clapper’s questioning of the president’s fitness for office.

“Jim Clapper’s a good man and a great American, in my opinion,” Johnson said. “And Jim is about as apolitical as they come. So I have high regard for his judgment and assessments.”

“Do you share his assessment that this president may not be fit?” MSNBC host Willie Geist asked.

“Well, no, I'm not prepared to make judgments like that. I am, obviously, concerned about a number of things this president has said and done, as are a number of people, Republicans and Democrats,” Johnson replied. “And we have a lot of issues that we need to deal with. You know, a lot of us are caught up in the politics of this. It’s good for ratings, but it’s not very good for the welfare of the country.”