Fox Business host Gerry Baker said Monday there is “no question” that many white supremacists view President Trump as a supporter of their cause.
“I think there is no question that white supremacists, large numbers of white supremacists, see Donald Trump and other people like him as kind of on their side,” Baker said on Fox News’s “The Daily Briefing With Dana Perino” while speaking about the New Zealand mosque shootings that left dozens dead.
Baker added that white supremacists likely see their views on immigration and culture as aligned with some of Trump’s rhetoric. He also said this may stem from the fact that Trump sometimes fails to present clear messages to the public.
“I think Donald Trump was very, very badly misrepresented over the Charlottesville incident where he was famously reported as saying ‘there is good people on both sides,’ ” Baker said, referring to Trump’s comments after a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017. “He wasn’t actually saying that there were good neo-Nazis, but as sometimes happens, he didn’t get his message across very clearly.”
{mosads}”So the idea he is out there deliberately giving support and succor to these white supremacists is not true,” Baker continued. “But he and others could do a better job of standing up directly and denouncing these people and saying, ‘whatever I think about immigration, whatever I think about the threat from radical Islam, I’m not in any way suggesting it is right for people to go out and commit these terrible acts.’”
An alleged gunman opened fire at a pair of mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, last Friday in a terrorist attack that left 50 people dead. The Australian man charged in connection with the attack reportedly killed 41 people at one mosque and seven at another. Two others died after being hospitalized.
Reports surfaced later that the suspect wrote a manifesto in which he referred to Trump “as a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose.” The line led to renewed scrutiny from many officials, with some calling on Trump to strongly condemn white nationalism.
Baker pushed back on the idea of linking the suspect’s manifesto to Trump, saying that the suspect never explicitly says “I’m doing this in the name of Trump.”
Trump called the shootings “horrific” last week, but added that he believes white nationalism is limited to “a small group of people that have very, very serious problems.”
Trump on Monday accused the media of “working overtime to blame me for the horrible attack in New Zealand.”