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- Scott Adams, the creator of the “Dilbert” comic strip and a fierce supporter of President Donald Trump says he felt ‘abused’ after Trump failed to condemn white supremacists at the first presidential debate.
- After being asked to condemn white supremacy on Tuesday’s debate, Trump danced around the question before telling the white nationalist group the Proud Boys, to “stand back and stand by.”
- The Proud Boys have been labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
- Adams said he’d vote for Trump if the president corrects his mistakes and denounces white supremacy.
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Scott Adams, the creator of the “Dilbert” comic strip and a fierce supporter of President Donald Trump, said he felt “abused” by Trump after the president failed to condemn white supremacists at the first presidential debate.
“I thought, it’s so obvious what you should say in this situation, and then he just didn’t,” Adams said in a video posted on Twitter.
—JD-800 💽 (@thejd800) October 1, 2020
Adams later said: “I took it personally. That wasn’t politics anymore. That was me personally and I feel like he screwed me, personally.”
On Tuesday’s debate, moderator Chris Wallace asked Trump, “Are you willing, tonight, to condemn white supremacists and militia groups and to say that they need to stand down?”
Trump danced around the question, saying “almost everything I see is from the left-wing, not from the right-wing.”
After pushback from Wallace and Democratic nominee Joe Biden who specifically referenced the white nationalist group, the Proud Boys, Trump said: "Proud Boys, stand back and stand by."
The Proud Boys have been labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center and regularly espouse anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, and misogynistic views.
In the video posted online on Thursday, Adams suggested that he has suffered financially for backing Trump.
"I would say that my personal financial situation is way worse, way worse because of supporting the president. There's no question about that," he said.
Adams said Trump lost his vote because he failed to resolutely condemn white supremacy, but said that if Trump were to correct his stance on the matter, the president could win back his support.
"All he'd have to do is fix that. I mean how hard is that to fix it. Well apparently its pretty f-----g hard for him because he's taken three years since Charlottesville, and he hasn't fixed it yet" Adams said. "Easiest "f-----g thing he'd ever fix. I take it personally."
In August 2017, Trump said there were "very fine people" on "both sides" and claimed "many sides" were responsible for deadly neo-Nazi violence at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
During that rally, a white supremacist drove his car into a crowd of anti-racism protesters, killing one person.