While political leaders on all sides strongly condemned the violence and racist thugs who promoted it in Charlottesville, VA., the President of the United States did not join in. Even 24 hours after the event, he could not; instead journalists got an email from an unnamed White House spokesman saying what Trump did not.

Is that because President Donald Trump is stupid, because he’s a racist himself, or perhaps just doesn’t want to offend his base voters: white racists? You can come up with your own answer of course, but there’s a long record of evidence that suggests our President is at heart a racist bigot.

Consider: He regularly condemns Hispanics and Muslims, whether terrorists or law-abiding citizens. He refuses to speak up against whites who commit racist crimes (including all of the police shootings of blacks you can recall). He denounces terrorists only when they are a minority and never when they are victims. There were displays of anti-Semitism at many of his political rallies in 2016. There are many, many more going back through his career including, when he was much younger, pleading no contest to an investigation into his refusal to rent apartments to African Americans.

Donald Trump may not be a racist bigot, but it can be argued quite clearly that his words and actions show that he is. That’s why the Nazis and bigots at the Charlottesville rally spoke so highly of Trump, finding it easy to adapt his political slogan with their vow to “take back America” for white people.

The people at that rally were thugs, among the lowest of our society. Why would anyone — why would President Trump — suggest in any way that the violence opposing their actions is some sort of moral equivalency? It most assuredly is not, and for President Trump to protest violence “on many sides” is crude, insensitive and false in very way.

Donald Trump remains a moral and ethical disgrace to the high office he holds.