At Rally, Trump Blames Media for Country’s Deepening Divisions

At Rally, Trump Blames Media for Country’s Deepening Divisions
Returning repeatedly to Charlottesville, he said the news media failed to focus on anarchists, who he said turned out in their “helmets
and the black masks — Antifa,” Mr. Trump said, spitting out the nickname for the anti-fascist groups.
PHOENIX — President Trump, stung by days of criticism
that he sowed racial division in the United States after deadly clashes in Charlottesville, Va., accused the news media on Tuesday of misrepresenting what he insisted was his prompt, unequivocal condemnation of bigotry and hatred.
K.K., we have K. K.K.,” Mr. Trump said sardonically of his rebuke to Charlottesville racists, after being
faulted for failing to condemn those groups in his initial response on the day of the clashes.
He said in an interview on Tuesday night that he did not know Mr. Trump was going to mention his name at the rally and reiterated
that he had not talked to the president since last fall.
The people in Arizona on Mr. Trump’s enemies list include both of the state’s Republican senators: Jeff Flake, a longtime nemesis whom Mr. Trump has described as “toxic,” not to mention a “flake”;
and John McCain, who cast the decisive Republican vote in the Senate to dash Mr. Trump’s effort to repeal President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act.
“It’s time to expose the crooked media deceptions,” Mr. Trump said.
Mr. Trump accused the news media of “trying to take away our history
and our heritage,” an apparent reference to the debate over removing statues to heroes of the Confederacy, which prompted the rally by neo-Nazis and white supremacists in Charlottesville.