“So this week, it’s Robert E. Lee, I noticed that Stonewall Jackson’s coming down. I wonder, is it George Washington next week? And is it Thomas Jefferson the week after. You know, you really do have to ask yourself, where does it stop?”

— President Trump, at a news conference at Trump Tower.

President Trump insisted that he did nothing wrong on Saturday when he declined to specifically condemn Nazi and white supremacist groups, asserting that “before I make a statement, I like to know the facts,” the New York Times reports.

In a long, combative exchange with reporters at Trump Tower, the president repeatedly rejected a torrent of bipartisan criticism for waiting several days before naming the right-wing groups and placing blame on “many sides” for the violence that ended with the deaths of a young woman after a car crashed into a crowd.

Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow tells Adam Davidson that at least one of the president’s business dealings should be “out of scope” to special counsel Robert Mueller.

One foreign deal, a stalled 2011 plan to build a Trump Tower in Batumi, a city on the Black Sea in the Republic of Georgia, has not received much journalistic attention. But the deal, for which Trump was reportedly paid a million dollars, involved unorthodox financial practices that several experts described to me as “red flags” for bank fraud and money laundering; moreover, it intertwined his company with a Kazakh oligarch who has direct links to Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin. As a result, Putin and his security services have access to information that could put them in a position to blackmail Trump.

The waterfront lot where the Trump Tower Batumi was supposed to be built remains empty. A groundbreaking ceremony was held five years ago, but no foundation has been dug. Trump removed his name from the project shortly before assuming the Presidency; the Trump Organization called this “normal housekeeping.” When the tower was announced, in March, 2011, it was the centerpiece of a bold plan to transform Batumi from a seedy port into a glamorous city. But the planned high-rise—forty-seven stories containing lavish residences, a casino, and expensive shops—was oddly ambitious for a town that had almost no luxury housing.

James Hohmann: “Donald Trump often behaves as if he’s first and foremost the president of the states and the people who voted for him. That’s at odds with the American tradition, and it’s problematic as a governing philosophy — especially in a moment of crisis. Trump’s initially tone-deaf response to Charlottesville underscores why.”

“Animated by grievance and congenitally disinclined to extend olive branches, Trump lashes out at his ‘enemies’ — his 2020 reelection campaign even used that word in a commercial released on Sunday — while remaining reticent to explicitly call out his fans — no matter how odious, extreme or violent.”

“Channeling his inner-Richard Nixon, who kept an enemies list of his own, candidate Trump often claimed to speak for ‘a silent majority.’ After failing to win the popular vote, President Trump has instead governed on behalf of an increasingly vocal but diminishing minority.”

Harvey Mansfield has an excellent piece in Commentary on the “vulgar manliness” of Donald Trump and why the Founders feared men like him.

He also has some interesting insights into the Trump phenomenon, like this one:

Trump noticed that the policy of inclusiveness, in cases such as affirmative action, was actually including some by excluding others not officially identified as vulnerable—particularly white voters. Without saying so—for in this Trump was cautious and prudent—he began to mobilize a white community to match the long-existing “black community,” thus turning the strategy of identity against itself. It was now Trump voters who were encouraged to think themselves marginalized.

One could call this racism only if the “inclusive” policy of the Democrats were also termed racism. Surely, however, Trump was not calling on the finer feelings of the electorate. In a democratic age without nobles to serve as targets, the demagogue has to operate against some of the people in order to claim to act on behalf of those forgotten. Arlie Hochschild, a Berkeley sociologist, has made a study of forgotten whites in Bayou Louisiana that nicely describes Trump voters before they voted for him. They were resentful, like departing airline passengers, of having to stand in line and watch other preferred groups waved ahead of them.

President Trump retweeted a cartoon of a train bearing the Trump logo killing a CNN reporter, the Daily Beast reports.

“The cartoon reads ‘Fake news can’t stop the Trump train.’ In July, Trump shared a GIF of himself beating the CNN logo to a pulp. Thirty minutes after promoting the cartoon at 7 a.m. Tuesday, it was deleted from Trump’s Twitter feed.”

Intel said that CEO Brian Krzanich was leaving President Trump’s American Manufacturing Council, “the latest executive to distance himself from the president following the weekend’s events in Virginia,” Ina Fried reports.

Said Krzanich: “I resigned to call attention to the serious harm our divided political climate is causing to critical issues, including the serious need to address the decline of American manufacturing. Politics and political agendas have sidelined the important mission of rebuilding America’s manufacturing base.”

Merck CEO Kenneth Frazier quit earlier today and was berated by Trump on Twitter.

Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank also said he was leaving the advisory group to focus on inspiring people through “the power of sport.”