VICE News Elle Reeve Delivers Balanced Power Punch Interviews With White Nationalist Leaders in Charlottesville
/'VICE News Tonight' correspondent Elle Reeve and her crew have the best coverage of the 'Unite the Right' weekend violence in which a domestic terror car attack left Charlottesville social-justice, para legal Heather Heyer dead.
Reeve has built on a trusting relationship with white nationalist leaders, including Christopher Cantwell, Robert Ray, David Duke, and Matthew Heimbach. This is not her first interview and after reading white nationalist blogs of a quality nature -- yes, they exist -- Reeve has their trust as a fair reporter. Counter protesters are also interviewed and it's rare for a journalist to get people to open up honestly, knowing that Reeve isn't setting them up.
In Britain PM Theresa May has refused to directly contradict Trump's insistence that both sides perpetrated equal violence in Charlottesville. Instead, May said that there was "no equivalence" between the far-right marchers and those who organized a counter protest.
On Tuesday, Trump went rogue at a press briefing, supposedly focused on infrastructure spending. Instead, Trump claimed that what he called the 'alt-left' (aka the counter protesters) was equally to blame for the violence in Charlottesville.
“You had people that were very fine people on both sides,” Trump insisted. “Not all those people were neo-Nazis, not all those people were white supremacists.”
Others abroad have been more direct. Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Tory leader, tweeted: “The President of the United States has just turned his face to the world to defend Nazis, fascists and racists. For shame.
Germany Justice Minister Heiko Maas blasted Trump's Tuesday news conference as one that sugarcoated the racist violence from the weekend.
“It is unbearable how Trump is now glossing over the violence of the right-wing hordes from Charlottesville,” Maas said in a statement, according to Reuters. “No one should trivialize anti-Semitism and racism by neo-Nazis.”
On Monday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel denounced the deadly violence in Charlottesville as "facist," "horrifying" and "evil", as she called for far-right violence to be condemned worldwide.
“It is racist, far-right violence and clear, forceful action must be taken against it, regardless of where in the world it happens,” Ms. Merkel said in an interview with the German public broadcasters Deutschlandfunk and Phoenix. Like May, Merkel declined to criticize Trump directly, saying that Germany continues to struggle with anti-Semitism and far-right extremists.
“Before we point our fingers at others, we need to take care of that which is happening at home,” Ms. Merkel said. “Of course that country is torn,” she said of the United States, “but what needs to be condemned is any form of violence, especially any forms of extreme or aggressive violence.”