Fact Check: 'Whatabout' Those Other Historical Figures? Trump's Question Answered
"So this week it's Robert E. Lee. I noticed that Stonewall Jackson's coming down. I wonder, is it George
Washington next week? And is it Thomas Jefferson the week after? You know, you really do have to ask yourself, where does it stop?.... [Jefferson] was a major slave owner. Are we going to take down his statue?" — President Trump, Aug. 15, 2017
"The president made this statement Tuesday while jabbing at reporters over a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., where white nationalists protested the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee."
"And he used one of his standard rhetorical techniques, 'whataboutism.'"
"While defending the protesters and claiming that they weren't all white supremacists, he changed the subject to attack others. "What about the alt-left?" he said, when asked about the white nationalist alt-right. ("Alt-left" is a term seemingly invented for whataboutism, making liberals seem like the moral equivalents of the "alt-right," whose members coined that term themselves.)"