Trump says ‘both sides’ to be blamed for Virginia violence
The US president was combative, to the discomfiture of his chief of staff
WASHINGTON: In a stunning reversal, President Donald Trump on Tuesday said “both sides” should be blamed for the Charlottesville clashes, referring to the white hate-groups that were protesting the removal of a statue of a confederate general, and the counterprotestors.
It had taken Trump a few hours to post his first response to the clashes, calling for peace on Saturday. A few hours hater, he proceeded to blame “many sides” for the violence that claimed three lives. Two days later, he issued a full-throated denunciation of neo-Nazis and white supremacists.
But it was a full-blown defence of the neo-Nazis, white supremacists and the Ku Klux Klan on Tuesday, shielding them from full blame. “There’s blame on both sides,” the president told reporters at a news briefing that turned combative. “If you look at both sides, I think there’s blame on both sides. And I have no doubt about it, and you don’t have any doubt about it either.”
Trump insisted that while “you had a group on one side that was bad”—Ku Klux Klan and white supremacists—“you had a group on the other side—(AltLeft, he called them) — that was also very violent…that came violently attacking the other group. So you can say what you want, but that’s the way it is.”
And he insisted there were some “fine people” in both groups, even among the protestors. “Not all of those people were neo-Nazis, believe me. Not all of those people were white supremacists by any stretch. There were some “very fine people” among them who had turned up simply to protest the removal of the statue, of Robert E Lee, he said.
Asked if he was putting the white supremacists and the AltLeft on the same “moral plane,” he said, “What I’m saying is this: You had a group on one side and you had a group on the other, and they came at each other with clubs, and it was vicious and it was horrible.”
Trump was on familiar ground—Trump Tower in New York — and had seemed to be in his elements.
He was combative, skirmishing with reporters calling them “fake news”, questioning their integrity; and unscripted, to the apparent discomfiture of his newly appointed chief of staff John Kelly who stood to the side, head bowed and arms folded across chest.
Trump cast aside the measured tone of his Monday denunciation of the white hate-groups using words and expressions his critics and allies had wanted to hear from him. On Tuesday, it was back to being Trump, seeking refuge in his base from persistently low approval ratings.
The president’s defence of the protestors did not stop at the “nice people” among them or the sharing of blame for the clashes, but also to their cause. “This week it's Robert E Lee,” he started. “I noticed that Stonewall Jackson (Jonathan ‘Stonewall' Jackson, another confederate general) is coming down.”
“I wonder, is it George Washington (the first president) next week? And is it Thomas Jefferson (the third president) the week after? You really do have to ask yourself, where does it stop?”