In the immediate aftermath of the deadly right-wing rally in Charlottesville, Va., on Saturday, it appeared that for once, President Donald Trump had a message that properly denounced the hateful views that inspired the violence.

“We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence,” Trump said.

Then he added three words that undermined his sympathy and showed once again his inability to disavow an element that helped him win the White House:

“On many sides.”

A day later, after being soundly and rightly criticized for his ham-fisted attempt to be even-handed, the White House tried to recover, with another statement that specifically condemned “white supremacists,” but it was not attributed to the president or any other named member of the administration.

On Monday afternoon, Trump came out with the words he should have used in the first place:

“Racism is evil. And those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.”

Then, on Tuesday, he changed course again, placing blame for Saturday’s events on both sides, including the “alt-left” that Trump said was “very, very violent.”

With its Nazi flags and hateful rhetoric, the situation in Charlottesville was ripe for chaos. The “Unite the Right” rally drew hundreds of counter protestors. A man later identified as James Fields Jr. of Ohio, who reportedly had spouted extremist views since high school, drove his Dodge Challenger into the group of marchers opposed to the rally.

Fields was charged in the death of one woman; 19 others also were injured. Authorities said two Virginia state troopers also died when their helicopter, which was monitoring the demonstrations, crashed on the outskirts of the University of Virginia campus.

Condemnation of the violence and of Trump’s reaction was swift and strong. 

“America is no place for bigots,” said Tom Perez, chair of the Democratic National Committee. “And to be silent in the face of their hatred is to condone it.”

Sen. Cory Booker, a New Jersey Democrat, put his opposition this way:

“President Trump’s words in his statement — ‘hatred, bigotry and violence that’s on many sides’ — not only fuels a misleading account of what actually happened but shamefully puts the counter-protestors on the same moral level and as those carrying Nazi flags and chanting vile racist rants.”

The Jewish mayor of Charlottesville, Michael Signer, who in January had declared his city the “capital of the resistance” to Trump, rightly noted that the demonstration grew straight out of the president’s campaign rhetoric.

“When you dance with the devil, the devil changes you,” he said. “And I think they made a choice in that campaign, a very regrettable one, to really go to people’s prejudices, to go to the gutter.”

And even Sen. Orrin Hatch, the Utah Republican who is no one’s idea of a liberal, had these harsh words for Trump:

“My brother didn’t give his life fighting Hitler for Nazi ideas to go unchallenged here at home.”

The controversy continued to shadow the White House on Monday. Even as Attorney General Jeff Sessions properly termed the violence in Charlottesville an “evil attack” that fit the definition of “domestic terrorism,” Kenneth C. Frazier, the chief executive of Merck, resigned from the president’s American Manufacturing Council, in response to Trump’s tepid reaction to the right-wing march. Soon after, Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank and Intel CEO Brian Krzanich, followed suit.

Frazier, one of the few African-Americans to head a major American company, said the nation’s leaders “must honor our fundamental views by clearly rejecting expressions of hatred, bigotry and group supremacy.”

Michael Gerson, a native St. Louisan who was chief speechwriter for President George W. Bush, forcefully made the case against the president’s tin ear in his column in The Washington Post, headlined “Trump babbles in the face of tragedy.”

“Ultimately,” Gerson wrote, “this was not merely the failure of rhetoric or context, but of moral judgment. The president could not bring himself initially to directly acknowledge the victims or distinguish between the instigators and the dead. He could not focus on the provocations of the side marching under a Nazi flag. 

“Is this because he did not want to repudiate some of his strongest supporters? This would indicate that Trump views loyalty to himself as mitigation for nearly any crime or prejudice. Or is the president truly convinced of the moral equivalence of the sides in Charlottesville? This is to diagnose an ethical sickness for which there is no cure.”

It’s long past time for the president to realize that bland pronouncements about how we all have to get along ring hollow when his actions and his underlying message preach the exact opposite.