During the "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, last weekend, Vice News Tonight correspondent Elle Reeve embedded herself with the neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other alt-right participants, and her documentary of the melee is pretty intense. On Wednesday night, CNN's Anderson Cooper had Reeve on to talk about her documentary and what she saw, in the light of President Trump's less-than-robust criticism of white supremacists on Tuesday. She said the most striking thing about the "Unite the Right" activities was how well-organized they were.
"Everyone who was there knew exactly what they were signing up for," Reeve said. So, Cooper asked, "when the president says that there were 'good people' at this march, that they were quietly there to protest a removal of the Robert E. Lee statue, that not all of them were neo-Nazis or white supremacists, what do you think? Is that true?" Reeve laughed. "No," she said. "Everyone who was there knew what they were doing. They were shouting 'Jews will not replace us!' It was very well coordinated, they had an order to the chants. Like, there was no mistaking, there was no innocent person wandering up and accidentally getting involved in this. ... They had a set time, they lined up, everyone got in line, they got their torches, we saw them snake all the way through the field. It was very clear that they had planned this."
Cooper asked how Trump's comments are being received by the white nationalists. "They love it," Reeve said. "The president continues to exceed the expectations of white nationalists. One texted me last night, 'My god I love this man. He really has our back.'" They see Trump's condemnation of neo-Nazis and white supremacists as "for the media, so the media will quiet down, but the real statement is he's okay with them, at least in their interpretation," she added. Reeve and Cooper also discussed the radicalized Iraq and Afghanistan War veterans who protect the white nationalists, some of the shocking things the white supremacists told her in the video, their grievances, and how scary it was making the documentary. Watch below. Peter Weber
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