No, he was not. That is not what the words meant in context, and he also said many other things in the same speech that directly contradict you.
> it's political violence and it's acceptable to every Republican voter.
This does not follow, and making assertions like this is entirely outside of civil discussion.
I again strongly encourage you to go watch the video or read the transcript since it directly contradicts what you are continuing to claim. Trump explicitly said that that the neo-Nazis should be "condemned totally." A total condemnation is exactly the opposite of your claim that he was "excusing" or trying to "minimize" the events. I will also note that I find it quite odd that you claim to be upset about Trump allegedly downplaying violence, but then go on to downplay and minimize left-wing extremist violence. I believe that all political violence should be condemned, its unfortunate that you appear to believe otherwise.
> I don't find it credible that he died coincidentally the day after being assaulted.
I think we'll have to agree to disagree here, I don't find it likely that I will be convinced to ignore the medical expert who examined the case and the corresponding documentary evidence that points against the idea that Sicknick was killed.
The argument being used to rebut you depends on understanding the transcript in its entirety. Yours depends on taking a few words out of context and misrepresenting the party to whom they refer.
- the specific people who killed a protestor are condemnable
- people were engaging in passionate political demonstration for the issue they were invested in before the killing occurred. They were Americans participating in the American tradition of protest and demonstration, the "fine people" on both sides
Problem is, that second point clashes hard with the footage of the event that showed white-shirted white men carrying tiki torches chanting "blood and soil." Most charitably, Trump wasn't talking about those folks; he was talking about some more moderate, reasonable pro-Lee-statue protestors who were there before the tiki torch mob showed up.
I think people's skepticism that such a moderate protest group actually exists varies, and if your skepticism is dialed to 100%, it's real easy to conclude Trump meant the "Jews will not replace us" crowd were the "fine people" because they don't see any other people he could be talking about.
In my view, he said this and more, plainly and as comprehensibly as can be expected.
> Most charitably, Trump wasn't talking about those folks; he was talking about some more moderate, reasonable pro-Lee-statue protestors who were there before the tiki torch mob showed up.
He said very directly and explicitly that he was talking about the non-violent protestors:
> There were people in that rally — and I looked the night before — if you look, there were people protesting very quietly the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee. I'm sure in that group there was some bad ones. The following day it looked like they had some rough, bad people. Neo-Nazis, white nationalists, whatever you wanna call them. But you had a lot of people in that group that were there to innocently protest — and very legally protest — because I don't know if you know, they had a permit.
He draws a very clear contrast between who he considers "rough, bad people" and who he considers to have "innocently protested".
> Problem is, that second point clashes hard
Only because of a human tendency to assign people to ingroups and outgroups and commit the fallacy of composition. Logically speaking, there is no contradiction whatsoever.
> I think people's skepticism that such a moderate protest group actually exists varies
It shouldn't, first off because they were seen and documented (even if some of the footage may have been suppressed) and second because of a general base-rate assumption that protests have a reasonable basis and are mostly conducted by non-violent people (and fair, intellectually honest discussion doesn't throw that assumption away just because the idea expressed is in the "wrong" general direction).
Put another way: the consensus estimate is that the George Floyd protests in 2020-2021 caused close $2 billion in damages (mainly to property), including over half a billion within Minneapolis–Saint Paul, along with (per Wikipedia) 19 confirmed deaths and over 14,000 arrests. However, this became a global phenomenon with protests spread across thousands of cities and towns, with probably millions of people involved (I can't readily find an estimate) directly in the streets and many more simply taking actions such as putting BLM logos on their webpages. So even with that extent of violence and damage, it's perfectly reasonable to believe that a "moderate protest group actually existed". Right-wingers like to meme about news networks (CNN in particular as I recall) speaking of "mostly peaceful protests" against a background of widespread arson and looting seen on camera; but as it turns out this is not actually a contradiction.
> if your skepticism is dialed to 100%, it's real easy to conclude Trump meant the "Jews will not replace us" crowd
I saw the footage. I heard "You", not "Jews". In some cases, the "Y" may have sounded somewhat like a "J" because of interference from the trailing "s" of the previous iteration of the chant. But I didn't hear an "s" on the end of the word. That would come from a mental auto-correction after already hearing "Jew" and realizing that "Jew will" is ungrammatical.
On the topic of Sicknick, I don't find it credible that he died coincidentally the day after being assaulted. The timing alone is strong evidence that the two are related.
Even if it was "merely" an assault on a police officer, it's political violence and it's acceptable to every Republican voter. You opened this door.