This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.

Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. During the first presidential debate,

and possibly the last, Chris Wallace asked Donald Trump if he would denounce white supremacist

violence at protests in Kenosha and Portland. I would say almost everything I see is from the left wing, not from the right wing. So what are you saying? I'm willing to do anything. I want to see peace. Then do it, sir. Say it. Do you want to call them, what do you want to call him? Give me a name. Give me a name. Who would you like me to condemn? White, Supremises and right. Proud boys. Stand back and stand by, but I'll tell you what, I'll tell you what, somebody's got to do something about Antifa and the left, because this is not a right-wing problem. This is a left-line. He did not rise to the occasion.

Rather than repudiate the proud boys, the president seemed to recognize them as his own.

And that shouldn't have been a surprise.

Trump has ignored or downplayed right-wing extremism from the start, whether it was longtime Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, or the very fine people on both sides at Charlottesville,

or Kyle Rittenhouse, the gunman in the Kenosha shooting.

Our producer Kalalia has been looking at how this encouragement of white supremacy is playing out

on the ground in Portland, where right-wing violence is rising fast.

Here's Kalalia.

Mack Smith is in his late 30s.

He's a father of four and he lives in Portland, Oregon.

I wasn't initially planning on going out to protest.

He's been to dozens of protests in the past.

But when the protest erupted over the killing of George Floyd, he could barely

function. Causing me to wake up with headaches. It was causing me to stress. It was causing me to

have depressive feelings and feelings of futility. It interrupted my ability to get things done

during the day. During the first intense week of protest in Portland, at the very

beginning of June, one story finally got Mack up and moving. Police shot their own anti-biased

trainer in the groin with a rubber-coated steel ball bullet bursting his testicle. Derek Sanderlin,

he was 27 years old, African American.

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