The following article by Amy Wang was posted on the Washington Post website August 23, 2017:
Daniel Kammen, a renewable energy expert appointed last year as a science envoy to the State Department, resigned Wednesday, citing President Trump’s response to the violence in Charlottesville as the final straw that led to his departure.
In a resignation letter posted to Twitter, Kammen wrote that Trump’s remarks about the racial violence in Virginia had attacked “core values of the United States” and that it would have “domestic and international ramifications.”
Demonstrations by white supremacist groups on Aug. 12 turned deadly after a neo-Nazi plowed a car into a crowd, killing one counterprotester and injuring at least 19 other people in Charlottesville. Two Virginia state troopers were also killed when their helicopter crashed.
Trump’s initial response was widely criticized, even by members of his own political party, for being insufficient and vague. Though the president later condemned the hate groups, he went on to effectively undo his conciliatory remarks by giving an off-the-rails news conference days later in which he once again blamed “both sides” in Charlottesville. Continue reading “Trump’s science envoy quits in scathing letter with an embedded message: I-M-P-E-A-C-H”