Trump pivots on blame
Returning to a position closer to his initial stance on Saturday’s violence in Charlottesville, Va., President Trump said Tuesday that “there is blame on both sides,” appearing to equate the actions of counterprotesters with the white supremacists they opposed. The comments in the lobby of Trump Tower in New York came a day after he branded members of the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis and white supremacists who take part in violence as “criminals and thugs.” Tuesday, he reverted to a stance criticized by both Democrats and Republicans.
NEW YORK — President Trump reverted Tuesday to blaming both sides for the deadly violence in Charlottesville, Va., and at one point questioned whether the movement to pull down Confederate statues would lead to the desecration of memorials to George Washington.
In a combative exchange with reporters at Trump Tower in Manhattan, the president repeatedly rejected bipartisan criticism for waiting two days before naming the right-wing groups and for placing blame on both the right and the left for the bloodshed on Saturday that ended with the death of a young woman after a car crashed into a crowd.
He said that “before I make a statement, I like to know the facts.”
And he criticized “alt-left” groups that he claimed were “very, very violent” when they sought to confront the white nationalist and Nazi groups that had gathered in Charlottesville to protest the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee from a park. He said there is “blame on both sides.”
“Many of those people were there to protest the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee,” Trump said. “This week, it is Robert E. Lee and this week, Stonewall Jackson. Is it George Washington next? You have to ask yourself, where does it stop?” he said, noting that the first American president had owned slaves.
Trump defended those gathered in the Charlottesville park to protest the statue’s removal, saying, “I’ve condemned neoNazis. I’ve condemned many different groups. Not all of those people were neo-Nazis, believe me. Not all of those people were white supremacists by any stretch.”
Trump unleashed a torrent of frustration at the news media, saying they were being “fake” because they did not acknowledge that his initial statement about the Charlottesville protest was “very nice.”
Again and again, Trump said that the portrayal of nationalist protesters in the city were not all Nazis or white supremacists, and he said it was unfair to suggest that they were.
The president added that blame for the violence in the city — which also took the lives of two Virginia state troopers when their helicopter crashed — should also be on people from “the left” who came to oppose the nationalist protesters.
“You had a group on one side and the other, and they came at each other with clubs, and it was vicious and horrible. It was a horrible thing to watch,” the president said. “There is another side. There was a group on this side, you can call them the left. You have just called them the left, that came violently attacking the other group. You can say what you want. That’s the way it is.”
He also called the alleged driver of the car that crashed into the crowd, James Alex Fields Jr., 20, “a disgrace to himself, his family and this country. You can call it terrorism. You can call it murder. You can call it whatever you want.”
Fields is being held without bail on charges of murder and malicious wounding in the death of Heather Heyer. His first court appearance was on Monday.