Defending far-right groups; is it a political strategy by Trump?

24 hours later, the fallout from Trump's "fine people on both sides" remark obviously continued to reverberate all over America. 
Overnight, Baltimore removed four confederate statues:

"Baltimore ‘Quietly’ Takes Down Four Confederate Statues After Charlottesville"

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/baltimore-takes-down-four-confederate-statues-after-charlottesville-violence-n793101

'Onlookers cheered early Wednesday as crews carted away Confederate monuments in Baltimore, where city leaders vowed to remove four of them on public property following this weekend's deadly violence in Virginia.

The swift removal came sooner than expected and began late Tuesday, Mayor Catherine Pugh told reporters. She watched as the statues were plucked from their pedestals, tethered to large cranes.

"I felt that the best way was to remove them overnight," Pugh said, adding, "I thought that enough speeches have been made about this. I didn't think I needed to do a big speech about why. ... We were going to move quickly and quietly."'

Earlier today, several companies started leaving Trump's economic council:

"Trump’s Council of C.E.O.s in Disarray Following Remarks on Protest"https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/16/business/trumps-council-ceos.html

As a result, Trump had to disband the council, & of course he announced it on twitter:

From the mainstream media & corporations, the criticism against Trump's remarks has been swift & unequivocal (as it should be). But does it even matter? The disaffected (& some very well-educated) young white men who make up the growing racist movement obviously won't care. The most important question is: was the condemnation & outrage from what the far-right calls "elite media" & "establishment politicians" planned all along by the Trump administration?

There is now the question of whether Trump was strategic in his defense of white supremacists & racists. 
On her show last night, Rachel Maddow had a thought-provoking opening segment:

"Jaws Drop As Rachel Maddow Exposes Trump’s Defense Of Racists and Nazis As No Accident"

http://www.politicususa.com/2017/08/15/jaws-drop-rachel-maddow-exposes-trumps-defense-racists-nazis-accident.html

"This was a lot of things today. It was not apparently a mistake, and at some point, it is going to have to stop being treated as a surprise. This was not the President accidentally blundering into something that inadvertently sounded like sympathy for people with unpopular political views. This is on purpose. This is what it is meant to be. The President building up and trying to center up in American politics a long standing force in white American politics and culture that we have been trained to think of as a fringe thing, but it does have a very long history, and it does have real force.

The President is not messing up here. He did not trip and accidentally praise white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and pro-Confederate demonstrators who actually killed somebody this weekend. This is not a screw-up. What he is building back up is something that was a long standing force for political power and terror for generations, and he is doing what he can to help them come back."

You should watch the segment (link above) because the fringe becoming political powerful might be in our near future (& in my opinion, in the most extreme case, the far-right could be activated in the streets by Trump if he runs into political trouble or if he gets impeached). & as depressing as that sounds, progressive activists & people in general should be ready to confront them.