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Its almost impossible to get Donald Trump to criticize one of his supporters. Last March, when former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke supported his campaign, Trump initially declined to disavow him and at one point blamed a bad earpiece for his failure to do so. A couple weeks later, when a Trump supporter punched an African-American man at a stadium rally, Trump said the man obviously loves the country and suggested he might pay his legal bills.

And, of course, after Saturdays alt-right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that left one woman dead, Trump blamed many sides and refused to single out white supremacists and neo-Nazis, even as a growing chorus of Republican elected officials called on him to do so.

One reason for Trumps mystifying refusal to criticize the alt-right racism in Charlottesville is that he came under similar pressure during the campaign, didnt buckle, and still won the election.

Last August, Trump hired Steve Bannon to take over his presidential campaign. Bannon was executive chairman of Breitbart News, the hard-right populist website that he had described a month earlier as the platform for the alt-right. Seeking to highlight Trumps unsavory connection to racists and anti-Semites, Hillary Clinton gave an August 25th speech in Reno, Nevada, explicitly warning about the danger of embracing white supremacy. Trump, Clinton declared, is reinforcing harmful stereotypes and offering a dog whistle to his most hateful supporters. Its a disturbing preview of what kind of president hed beThese are racebaiting ideas, antiMuslim and antiimmigrant ideas, antiwoman--all key tenets making up an emerging racist ideology known as the altright. She added: A fringe element has effectively taken over the Republican Party.

Most Americans had never heard the term alt-right until Clinton highlighted it inher speech. The term was just beginning to enter the political lexicon, a Clinton adviser told me, in an interview for my book Devils Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump and the Storming of the Presidency. We thought it would be catnip that would fuel peoples curiosity [about the altright] and what Bannons place was in that world. Trumps campaign was built on stoking xenophobic impulses, so you could take a process story on Bannons hire and turn it into a bigger critique of how Trump was uniquely unacceptable.

In one sense, Clintons speech had the desired effect: it sparked a nationwide debate about alt-right racism. But it didnt prompt Trump to fire Bannon or distance himself in any way from his alt-right supporters. And as a political attack, it plainly failed. A month later, Trumps poll numbers had improved.As Bannon told me in Devils Bargain, We polled the race stuff and it doesnt matter. It doesnt move anyone who isnt already in her camp.

Its not clear why Trump has so far refused to call out the neo-Nazis and white supremacists in Charlottesville whose rally produced deadly violence. He has come under withering criticism not only from Republican senators like Orrin Hatch and Cory Gardner, but also from conservative media outlets like Fox News andthe New York Post.

On Sunday, Vice President Mike Pence offered an explicit condemnation of the Charlottesville instigators during a visit to Colombia. "We have no tolerance for hate and violence from white supremacists, neo-Nazis or the KKK, Pence said at a news conference with Colombia's president, Juan Manuel Santos. These dangerous fringe groups have no place in American public life and in the American debate, and we condemn them in the strongest possible terms," he said.

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Having survived Clintons attack over alt-right racism, Trump may simply feel impervious to the pressure to speak out more forcefully about Charlottesville. But the differences between the two episodes are significant. Last year, Trump was being attacked by a Democratic political opponent; the basis of the attack was a website most people dont read; and the specter of alt-right violence that Clinton invoked in her speech was theoretical.

Charlottesville was different in every respect: The bloodshed and deadly assault were vividly on display for all to see. Those responsible for it were not Democrats, but Trump supporters (some marchers shouted Heil Trump!). And this time, the calls for Trump to show moral courage and condemn the Nazis and white supremacists are coming from his fellow-Republicans.

Trump may find himself forced to say something more specific or he may continue to refuse, as he did in the campaign. But its hard to imagine his poll numbers improving in the wake of the tragedy, as they did last August. The difference between the two episodes couldnt be more stark or more obvious to everyone except Trump.

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Why Trump Refuses to Call Out Alt-Right Violence - Bloomberg