Drawing a moral equivalence between racists ramming speeding cars into crowds and those crowds who didn't ram speeding cars into racists, not to mention between Confederacy leadership and the likes of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, was remarkable at best. 

Repugnant is another word for it.

It's a fine line that defenders of civil liberty, including the freedom to say ugly things, must walk. This isn't an endorsement of state-sanctioned silencing of speech with which we happen to disagree, nor is it an invitation for the use of violence to stop that speech.

But when embracers of an ugly ideology make a public display, it's surely obvious they are trying to provoke a response. To play innocent when it goes predictably wrong is disingenuous. 

"Many sides" may have contributed to a degree; only one committed cold-blooded murder. It's stunning that the president apparently doesn't see that.