Trump’s aides defend his reply

BEDMINSTER, N.J. — The White House on Sunday sought to quell criticism of President Donald Trump’s failure to denounce by name the white supremacists who took part in violence in a Virginia city, a response that associates said was based largely on Trump’s own read of the melee with counterprotesters.

Trump, while on a working vacation at his New Jersey golf club, addressed the nation Saturday soon after a car plowed into a group of counterprotesters in Charlottesville, a college town where neo-Nazis and

white nationalists had assembled for a march. The president did not single out any group, instead blaming “many sides” for the violence.

In a statement, and through aides appearing on Sunday talk shows, the White House defended Trump’s general public condemnation Saturday of the events that led to three deaths and dozens of injuries in the college town in Virginia.

“The president said very strongly in his statement yesterday that he condemns all forms of violence, bigotry and hatred and of course that includes white Supremacists, KKK, neo-Nazi and all extremist groups,” according to a White House spokesman. “He called for national unity and bringing all Americans together.”

The White House would not attach a staff member’s name to the statement.

Trump will continue to receive regular updates from his team, according to the official to whom the statement was attributed, and Thomas Bossert, the White House homeland security adviser, was in Bedminster monitoring the situation.

Bossert, in an interview Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union, dismissed any suggestion that the president had failed to adequately condemn white supremacists.

Bossert praised the statement the president made on Saturday, saying that Trump had appropriately criticized an event that “turned into

an unacceptable level of violence at all levels.”

“This isn’t about President Trump — this is about a level of violence and hatred that could not be tolerated in this country,” Bossert told CNN’s Jake Tapper. “I was with the president yesterday, and I’m proud of the fact that he stood up and calmly looked into the camera and condemned this violence and bigotry in all its forms. This racial intolerance and racial bigotry cannot be condoned.”

Tapper responded by citing a white nationalist website that described Trump’s remarks as “really, really good.” He then asked Bossert: “Are you at least willing to concede that the president was not clear enough in condemning white supremacy?”

Bossert replied that Trump “didn’t dignify the names of these groups of people, but rather addressed the fundamental issue.”

In his statement Saturday, Trump disavowed hate but did not delve into details, saying: “Hate and the division must stop, and must stop right now. We have to come together as Americans with love for our nation and … true affection for each other.”

Trump condemned “in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides.”

The Justice Department, meanwhile, faced continuing questions Sunday about why it took Attorney General Jeff Sessions as long as it did Saturday to announce a

hate-crime investigation and why the FBI has not labeled the deadly car-ramming incident Saturday as an act of “domestic terrorism.”

Sessions did not announce that the department would open a civil-rights investigation until nearly 11 p.m. Saturday night, after Democratic and Republican lawmakers called for the action. The department gave no indication of how broad that investigation will be.

Sessions is scheduled to appear on three network morning shows today to talk about his department’s response.

OTHERS RESPOND

The president on Saturday did not answer questions from reporters about whether he rejected the support of white nationalists or whether he believed the car attack was an example of domestic terrorism. Aides who appeared on the Sunday news shows said the White House did believe those things, but many fellow Republicans demanded that Trump personally denounce the white supremacists.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said on Fox News Sunday that Trump needs to “correct the record here.”

“These groups seem to believe they have a friend in Donald Trump in the White House, and I would urge the president to dissuade that,” Graham said.

Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., tweeted: “Mr. President we must call evil by its name. These were white supremacists and this was domestic terrorism.”

Added Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla.: “Nothing patriotic about #Nazis,the #KKK or #WhiteSupremacists It’s the direct opposite of what #America seeks to be.”

“With the moral authority of the presidency, you have to call that stuff out,” Anthony Scaramucci, an ally of Trump’s who served briefly as White House communications director last month, told George Stephanopoulos of ABC’s This Week on Sunday.

“I wouldn’t have recommended that statement,” added Scaramucci, whose abbreviated tenure was characterized by a pledge to let Trump express himself without interference from staff members. “I think he would have needed to have been much harsher.”

On the Democrat side, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer of New York tweeted: “of course we condemn ALL that hate stands for. Until POTUS specifically condemns alt-right action in Charlottesville, he hasn’t done his job.”

And Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Virginia, who spoke to Trump in the hours after the clashes, said he twice “said to him we have to stop this hateful speech, this rhetoric.” He urged Trump “to come out stronger” against the actions of white supremacists.

Trump’s national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, said Sunday that he considered the attack in Charlottesville to be terrorism: “I certainly think anytime that you commit an attack against people to incite fear, it is terrorism,”

McMaster said on ABC’s This Week.

“It meets the definition of terrorism. But what this is, what you see here, is you see someone who is a criminal, who is committing a criminal act against fellow Americans,” he said.

The president’s daughter and White House aide, Ivanka Trump, tweeted Sunday morning: “There should be no place in society for racism, white supremacy and neo-nazis.”

‘NOTHING AGAINST US’

White nationalists had assembled in Charlottesville to vent their frustration against the city’s plans to take down a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. Counterprotesters massed in opposition. A few hours after violent encounters between the two groups, a car drove into a crowd of people peacefully protesting the rally, killing a 32-year-old woman and leaving 19 people injured. The driver was later taken into custody.

Television images showed police in riot gear among the crowd, and some of the protesters chanted anti-Semitic slogans. Two state troopers later died in a helicopter crash after responding to the scene.

Alt-right leader Richard Spencer and former Ku Klux Klan member David Duke attended the demonstrations. Duke told reporters that the white nationalists were working to “fulfill the promises of Donald Trump.”

Trump’s speech also drew praise from the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer, which wrote: “Trump comments were good. He didn’t attack us. He just said the nation should come together. Nothing specific against us. … No condemnation at all.”

The website had been promoting the Charlottesville demonstration as part of its “Summer of Hate” edition.

Mayor Michael Signer, a Democrat, said he was disgusted that the white nationalists had gone to his town and accused Trump of inflaming racial prejudice during his presidential campaign last year.

“I’m not going to make any bones about it. I place the blame for a lot of what you’re seeing in American today right at the doorstep of the White House and the people around the president,” he said.

Trump, as a candidate, frequently came under scrutiny for being slow to offer his condemnation of white supremacists. His strongest denunciation of the movement has not come voluntarily, only when asked, and he occasionally trafficked in retweets of racially biased social media posts during his campaign. His chief strategist, Steve Bannon, once declared that his former news site, Breitbart, was “the platform for the alt-right.”