Sorry - participating in a protest should never be a life threatening choice. Do you honestly thing anyone of the counter protesters felt they were making a life or death decision? 

Trump is the dream president for David Duke and the neo-nazi supporters. He draws a false equivalency and thus takes back any condemnation of his prior statement. He might as well have stood up there and said " Hey - forget what I said before. I was forced to sound as if I disagreed with the guys with the flags, the military dress and hardware, the torchlight march so reminiscent to the ones from 1938, the anti-semitism, the racism...I'm not all that much opposed to it. They voted for me so they must be o.k."