Trump Va. tirade: ‘NOT ALL OF THOSE PEOPLE WERE NEO-NAZIS’
Tirade praised by Duke, decried by Republicans
A combative President Trump went on a long and divisive tirade, putting “blame on both sides” for the violence in Charlottesville, Va., while insisting “not all of those people were neo-Nazis” — to the delight of former KKK leader David Duke and the horror of his fellow Republicans.
“I think there’s blame on both sides,” said Trump. “You have some very bad people in that group. But you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides . ... You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name.”
Rep. Steve Stivers (R-Ohio), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, reacted, “I don’t understand what’s so hard about this. White supremacists and neo-Nazis are evil and shouldn’t be defended.”
“No, not the same,” tweeted former Bay State Gov. Mitt Romney. “One side is racist, bigoted, Nazi. The other opposes racism and bigotry. Morally different universes.” Trump’s fiery back-and-forth with reporters at Trump Tower removed any of the praise he received a day earlier for more strongly, if belatedly, condemning hate groups involved in the racist Charlottesville protests.
Duke, the former head of the KKK, praised the unusual press conference on Twitter.
“Thank you President Trump for your honesty & courage to tell the truth,” he tweeted.
Trump also questioned whether backlash on the left would eventually start targeting America’s founding fathers.
“George Washington was a slave-owner,” said Trump. “Are we going to take down statues to George Washington? How about Thomas Jefferson?
Earlier in the day, Trump had accused CEOs who have stepped down from his Manufacturing Advisory Council in protest as “grandstanders,” vowing to have no difficulty replacing them.
In what would have been a top headline on almost any other day, Trump also appeared to leave controversial White House adviser Steve Bannon in the doghouse when asked if he still has confidence in him.
“Well, we’ll see,” said Trump. “Look, I like Mr. Bannon. He’s a friend of mine. But Mr. Bannon came on very late, you know that. I went through 17 senators, governors, and I won all the primaries. Mr. Bannon came on very much later than that.”