Trump defends fascist rally participants President offers comfort to racists, say Republicans
US PRESIDENT Donald Trump has revised his declaration that “both sides” were to blame for violence at a white supremacist rally over the weekend in Charlottesville, abandoning his message from a day earlier that emphasised the culpability of the groups that organised and participated in the event.
In a remarkable show of defiance, Trump insisted during a combative exchange with reporters at Trump Tower in Manhattan that there were “two sides to a story”, just a day after he had belatedly condemned racist hate groups for the mayhem that left a woman dead and many other people injured. Two state troopers also died in a helicopter crash near the scene.
Trump chafing at the political backlash over his handling of the situation and his aides’ attempts to rein him in also appeared eager to cast aspersions on the counterprotesters, who he said acted “very, very violently”.
He also made clear that he believes many of the participants in the Unite the Right rally were taking part in a lawful demonstration against the Charlottesville city council’s decision to remove a statue of Confederate General Robert E Lee from a public square.
“You had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists, okay?” Trump said. “And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly.
“You had a lot of bad people in the other group,” he said, referring to the counterprotesters.
A car, allegedly driven by a neoNazi sympathiser, ploughed into a crowd of counterprotesters at the demonstration, killing a 32-year-old woman and injuring 19 people.
The rally was organised by fascist groups, including Klu Klux Klan supporters, white supremacists and neo-Nazis.
Trump’s remarks represented a rebuke of the broad array of political, civic and cultural leaders who had called on him over the past few days to denounce the hate groups and offer support for the victims of the violence.
Under mounting pressure to set a clear moral tone, he lashed out defensively against criticism that he had fanned the flames of racial divisions and, in doing so, failed a crucial test of his presidency.
During the remarks – which caught senior aides watching from the lobby by surprise – Trump appeared far more passionate in defending many of the rally participants than he had in his more muted denunciation of the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis a day earlier at the White House, where he read from prepared remarks. Visibly irritated, he argued with reporters and spoke over them, refusing at times to let them cut him off.
Speaking off the cuff, Trump compared Founding Fathers George Washington and Thomas Jefferson to Lee and General Stonewall Jackson, Confederate commanders during the Civil War.
He suggested that the former presidents might have their memorials removed because they owned slaves.
Politicians from both political parties quickly denounced the president’s remarks, with Republicans growing more vocal in their criticism than they had been in recent days. Senator Marco Rubio declared the rally organisers to be “100% to blame”, and pleaded with Trump to hold them accountable.
“Mr President, you can’t allow #White Supremacists to share only part of blame,” he wrote. “We can not allow this old evil to be resurrected.”
Bu the president’s performance was applauded by white nationalist leaders. David Duke, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, praised the president on Twitter for his “honesty & courage to tell the truth about #Charlottesville”.
Meanwhile, work crews took down four Confederate monuments in Baltimore overnight.
Monuments to Lee, commander of the Confederate army in the Civil War, and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, a Confederate general, were dismantled from the city’s Wyman Park after the city council approved the removal of four statues.