Trump: ‘History ripped apart’ by removing of monuments
WASHINGTON — President Donald 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, Virginia.
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 said after an event in his home state.
The Tennessee Republican, typically an ally of the White House, warned: “Our nation is going to go through great peril” if Trump cannot show that he understands “what has made this nation great.”
Pressured by advisers, the president had taken a step back from the dispute on 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 counter-protester in Charlottesville.