See also: Trump’s critics reveling in the opportunity to tie him to white racists and Nazis

Donald Trump made a statement on the violence that broke out in Charlottesville, Virginia on Saturday that fell far short of what needed to be said and what Americans needed to hear from their president.

The statement was given at a "press conference" at a bill signing ceremony (no questions about the violence or the bill were taken). While the president condemned the violence and hate, he softened his criticism by blaming "all sides" for the violence. This may have been technically accurate. But by not specifically condemning white supremacists and most importantly, their rancid ideology, the president played into the hands of his critics who are now condemning his statement as "insufficient."

Once again, the president is playing pattycakes with the haters who have adopted him as one of their own.  

Trump has condemned white supremacists in the past and said he "disavows" them. So why isn't that enough? As long as the racists continue to identify themselves with Trump and brag about electing him, he is vulnerable to the charge of being insufficiently vigorous in denouncing them.

Indeed, contrast what Trump said with the statement of Senator Ted Cruz:

It's tragic and heartbreaking to see hatred and racism once again mar our great Nation with bloodshed. Heidi's and my prayers are with the loved ones of those killed and injured in the ongoing violence in Charlottesville. The First Amendment protects the rights of all Americans to speak their minds peaceably, but violence, brutality, and murder have no place in a civilized society.

The Nazis, the KKK, and white supremacists are repulsive and evil, and all of us have a moral obligation to speak out against the lies, bigotry, anti-Semitism, and hatred that they propagate. Having watched the horrifying video of the car deliberately crashing into a crowd of protesters, I urge the Department of Justice to immediately investigate and prosecute this grotesque act of domestic terrorism.

These bigots want to tear our country apart, but they will fail. America is far better than this. Our Nation was built on fundamental truths, none more central than the proposition "that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness".

Is Ted Cruz soft on the Antifas because he didn't mention that the kluxers weren't the only ones responsible for the violence? Cruz, whose statement was far more presidential than Trump's, realized that there is a time and a place for everything in politics and as a conservative leader, it was time to denounce without reservation or hesitation the white supremacists. It doesn't matter that the anarchists and radical leftists took part in the violence. They may have started it. They may be mostly responsible for it. No one knows. But what is known is that people who claim to support and identify with Donald Trump were promoting an un-American agenda filled with hate and resentment, that has no place in the mainstream of political discourse.

Trump apparently didn't get that and is being rightfully criticized by all sides for that oversight.

This was an incident that demanded a formal presidential response - not an afterthought to a bill signing ceremony. The president kept leaving the prepared text to make disjointed and awkward observations, lessening the impact of his words. His inclusion in the middle of the statement of his administration's economic accomplishments was bizarre, diluting his peroration about Americans needing to love one another - by far the best part of the statement. 

Trump is not a conscious racist or a bigot. But when given the opportunity to hit the ball out of the park by condemning by name the odorous ideology demonstrating in Charlottesville, he failed.