Trump digs in on Confederate icons
President remains defiant amid backlash
BRIDGEWATER, N.J. — With prominent Republicans openly questioning his competence and moral leadership, President Donald Trump on Thursday burrowed deeper into the racially charged debate over Confederate memorials and lashed out at membersof his own party in the latest controversy to engulf his presidency.
Out of sight, but still online, Mr. Trump tweeted his defense of monuments to Confederate icons — bemoaning rising efforts to remove them as an attack on America’s “historyand culture.”
And he berated his critics who, with increasingly sharper language, have denounced his initially slow and then ultimately combative comments on the racial violence at a white supremacist rally last weekend in Charlottesville, Va.
Mr. Trump was much quicker Thursday to condemn violence in Barcelona, where more than a dozen people were killed when a van veered onto a sidewalk and sped down a busy pedestrian zone in what authorities calleda terror attack.
He then added to his expression of support a tweet reviving a debunked legend about a U.S. general subduing Muslim rebels a century ago in the Philippines by shooting them with bullets dipped in pig blood.
“Study what General Pershing of the United States did to terrorists when caught. “There was no more Radical Islamic Terror for 35 years!” Mr. Trump wrote.
Mr. Trump’s unpredictable, defiant and, critics claim, racially provocative behavior has clearly begun to wear on his Republican allies.
Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, whom Mr. Trump considered for a Cabinet post, declared Thursday that “the president has not yet been able to demonstrate the stability nor some of the competence that he needs to” in dealing with crises.
And Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska tweeted:
“Anything less than complete & unambiguous condemnation of white supremacists, neo-Nazis and the KKK by the @POTUS is unacceptable. Period.”
Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina said Mr. Trump’s “moral authority is compromised.”
Mr. Trump, who is known to try to change the focus of news coverage with an attention-grabbing declaration, sought to shift Thursday from the white supremacists to the future of statues.
“You can’t change history, but you can learn from it,” he tweeted. “Robert E. Lee. Stonewall Jackson — who’s next, Washington, Jefferson? So foolish. ...
“Also the beauty that is being taken out of our cities, towns and parks will be greatly missed and never able to be comparably replaced!”
“Sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments,” he tweeted.
Meanwhile, Mr. Trump prepared for an unusual meeting Friday at the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland with his national security team to discuss strategy for South Asia, including India, Pakistan and Afghanistan.