ZitatVirginia Governor Terry McAuliffe refused to condemn the violent, left-wing "Antifa" movement Monday night when given a chance to do so, the Independent Journal Review reported.
When repeatedly asked by IJR's Benny Johnson whether he disavows Antifa for its outrageous violence in Berkeley, McAuliffe refused to directly denounce the group.
Instead -- like President Trump -- he drew a moral equivalency between violence on "any side."
“I disavow anyone — we won't tolerate violence of any kind," he said. "You’re entitled to protest. First amendment certainly protected. As I've said after Charlottesville, anyone who came to our state, anyone who committed violence, on any side, will be arrested. [...] Everybody’s entitled to do their protest but were not going to accept violence from anybody.”
When asked again if he directly disavows antifa by name, the governor said, “Here’s what I do as governor, I denounce any individual who commits a crime, who commits violence on our citizens. We will get you, and we will arrest you, plain and simple. I don’t care what the group is.”
At this point, the governor's staffer said they had to leave, and he entered his vehicle.
Weird, huh?
Because as you may remember, in the wake of the carnage in Charlottesville earlier this month, McAuliffe was not so hesitant to identify hate groups by name. In fact, he ran to the nearest microphone to condemn the white supremacists and Nazi marchers by name, because it could be shoehorned into a convenient narrative for the left.
“I have a message to the white supremacists and the nazis who came into Charlottesville today,” McAuliffe declared dramatically at a televised press conference. “Go home! You are not wanted in this great commonwealth!" he heaved