Trump's Charlottesville Press Conference 4

[4]

(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: I didn't know David Duke was there. I wanted to see the facts. And the facts as they started coming out were very well stated. In fact, everybody said his statement was beautiful; if he would have made it sooner, that would have been good. I couldn't have made it sooner because I didn't know all of the facts.

Frankly, people still don't know all of the facts. It was very important that – excuse me, excuse me – it was very important to me to get the facts out and correctly. Because if I would have made a fast statement, and the first statement was made without knowing much other than what we were seeing.

The second statement was made after – with knowledge, with great knowledge. There are still things – excuse me – there are still things that people don't know.
TRUMP: I want to make a statement with knowledge. I wanted to know the facts.
OK...
(CROSSTALK)
QUESTION: Was it – two questions. Was it terrorism? And can you tell us what you're feeling about your...
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: Well, I think the driver of the car is a disgrace to himself, his family and his country. And that is – you can call it terrorism. You can call it murder. You can call it whatever you want. I would just call it as the fastest one to come up with a good verdict. That's what I'd call it. Because there is a question. Is it murder? Is it terrorism? And then you get into legal semantics.
The driver of the car is a murderer. And what he did was a horrible, horrible, inexcusable thing.

He didn't know David Duke was there--ok. I didn't either. Maybe he should have.
   Then a bunch of incoherent circle-talk.
   Then: what is terrorism?
   Well...uh...that's actually a rather difficult question. Is the transcript right? Is a reporter actually asking the POTUS to define terrorism in the middle of a press conference? This seems weird as hell to me. But, again: I'm likely to be the weird one.
   I suppose what others are thinking here is: he has been quick to condemn acts by non-whites as acts of terrorism, so he needs to be equally quick in this case. He must have some operative concept of terrorism... This is apparently an attempt to press the consistency argument against him. This is the kind of thing that didn't occur to me until I finally figured out what Trump's critics were trying to say about this. All I can figure is: they're thinking more about how his statements here fit into the bigger picture, while I'm (apparently illicitly) focused too much on what he actually says in the press conference.
   Again, I--wrongly, I'm assured--thought Trump's answer was pretty good. Here's why:
   First, there's more than a little disagreement about what terrorism actually is.  In fact it's a significant question. (On some common definitions, for example, Allied strategic bombing of Axis cities was terroristic. This conclusion strikes many people as implausible.)
   Second, it does seem clearer to me that the driver is a murderer than that he's a terrorist...though I'm not sure that Trump should have said even that much.
   Third, it was announced pretty early on that the driver was being charged with second degree murder. I'm not sure how it's possible to get around the obvious implications of that, at least to a layperson: that it was unpremeditated. And I don't immediately see how it makes sense to talk about an unpremeditated act of terrorism.
   Fourth, it's customary to praise Presidents for refusing to prejudice legal cases by making public proclamations about guilt. It's my understanding that Trump can queer the whole deal by proclaiming the driver to be guilty of an act of terrorism.

   Again: at this point I'm accepting--in some sense of 'accepting'--that I'm the crazy one here. At this point it makes more sense to try to figure out where I've gone wrong than to argue that I was right.