Charlottesville aftermath:
President Trump says pulling down monuments to Confederate icons destroys history and removes irreplaceble beauty from cities.
WASHINGTON — President Trump bitingly decried the rising movement to pull down monuments to Confederate icons Thursday, declaring the nation is seeing “the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart.”
Trump’s remarks came as the White house tried to manage his increasing isolation and the continued fallout from his combative previous comments on last weekend’s racially charged violence in Charlottesville, Va.
He also tore into fellow Republicans who have criticized his statements on race and politics, fanning the controversy toward a full-fledged national conflagration.
As day six of the White House reaction to Charlottesville wore on, some Republicans were sharpening their criticism of Trump.
The president “has not yet been able to demonstrate the stability, nor some of the competence, that he needs to demonstrate in order to be successful,” Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., said after an event in his home state.
Pressured by advisers, the president had taken a step back from the dispute Monday, two days after he had enraged many by declining to single out the white supremacists and neo-Nazis whose demonstration against the removal of a Robert E. Lee statute had led to violence and the death of a counterprotester in Charlottesville.
Yet he returned to his combative stance on Tuesday — insisting anew that “both sides” were to blame. And then in a burst of tweets Thursday, he renewed his criticism of efforts to remove memorials and tributes to the Civil War Confederacy.
“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!”
He wasn’t talking about beauty in earlier tweets, lashing out at GOP Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Jeff Flake of Arizona.
He accused “publicityseeking” Graham of falsely stating his position on the demonstrators, called Flake “toxic” and praised a Flake primary election opponent.