Trump condemns hate groups, but initial response not forgotten
WASHINGTON — Bowing to pressure from right and left, President Donald Trump condemned white-supremacist groups by name on Monday, declaring “racism is evil” after two days of public equivocation and internal White House debate over the deadly race-fueled clashes in Charlottesville, Virginia.
In a hastily arranged statement at the White House, Trump branded members of the KKK, neo-Nazis and white supremacists who take part in violence as “criminals and thugs.”
The groups are “repugnant to everything that we hold dear as Americans,” he said.
In his initial remarks on the violence Saturday, Trump did not single out the groups and instead bemoaned violence on “many sides.” Those remarks prompted stern criticism from fellow Republicans as well as Democrats, who urged him to condemn hate groups specifically.
Trump’s softer statement on Saturday had come as graphic images of a car plowing into a crowd in Charlottesville were playing continually on television. White nationalists had assembled in the city to protest plans to take down a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, and counter-protesters gathered in opposition. Fights broke out, and then a man drove into the opponents of the white supremacists. One woman was killed and many more badly hurt.
Twenty-year-old James Alex Fields Jr. of Maumee, Ohio, is charged with second-degree murder and other counts.
Monday night, Trump returned to Trump Tower in Manhattan for the first time since his inauguration. He was met there by thousands of protesters and heavy security.
Demonstrators stood in pens that police erected across the street from Trump Tower and lined nearby blocks of Fifth Avenue by early Monday evening, hours before he arrived. So did a far smaller crowd of Trump supporters.
Some protesters carried signs with such messages as “impeach” and “the White House is no place for white supremacy” as chants including “not my president,” ‘’love, not hate — that’s what makes America great” and “New York hates you!” rose in a roar that echoed off the skyscrapers.
About two dozen Trump fans were in a separate pen near The Plaza, chanting “God bless President Trump” and carrying American flags and signs with such sentiments as “now is not the time for divisiveness.”
Police, who struggled at one point to hold protesters behind barricades, stationed sand-filled sanitation trucks as barriers around Trump’s signature skyscraper and layers of metal police barricades around the main entrance.
The president had indicated to advisers before his initial statement Saturday that he wanted to stress a need for law and order, which he did. He later expressed anger to those close to him about what he perceived as the media’s unfair assessment of his remarks, believing he had effectively denounced all forms of bigotry, according to outside advisers and White House officials.
Several of Trump’s senior advisers, including new chief of staff John Kelly, had urged him to make a more-specific condemnation, warning that the negative story would not go away and that the rising tide of criticism from fellow Republicans on Capitol Hill could endanger his legislative agenda, according to two White House officials.
On Monday, Trump had planned to interrupt his 17-day working vacation at his New Jersey golf club to travel to Washington for an announcement he hoped would showcase some tough talk on China’s trade practices. But by the time he arrived at midmorning, it was clear all other messages would be drowned out until he said more about Charlottesville.
Reading from a teleprompter, he made a point of beginning with an unrelated plug for the strength of the economy under his leadership. Then, taking pains to insist “as I said on Saturday,” Trump denounced the hate groups and called for unity.
“We must love each other, show affection for each other and unite together in condemnation of hatred, bigotry and violence,” he said.
Trump for the first time mentioned Heather Heyer by name as he paid tribute to the woman killed by the car. Two state troopers — TrooperPilot Berke M.M. Bates of Quinton, Virginia, and Lt. H. Jay Cullen of Midlothian, Virginia — also died Saturday when their helicopter crashed during an effort to contain the violence.
At the trade event later in the day, he offered fresh criticism of the media. He followed with a tweet declaring “the #fakenews will never be satisfied.”
His attorney general, Jeff Sessions, said earlier Monday on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” ‘’You can be sure we will charge and advance the investigation toward the most serious charges that can be brought, because this is an unequivocally unacceptable and evil attack that cannot be accepted in America.”
He said the attack met the definition of domestic terrorism.
Fields, a young man who was said to idolize Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany in high school, was charged Monday in Heyer’s death and ordered held without bail. In Maumee, several hundred people marched through the streets Monday night to rally against Fields’ actions.
Fields worked as a security officer in Ohio for Securitas Security Services USA Inc. Securitas said Fields was on vacation leave when police say he rammed his car into the counter-protesters. The company says Fields’ employment has been terminated.
Records from 911 calls from the Florence (Kentucky) Police Department show the man’s mother had called police in 2011. Records show Fields’ mother, Samantha Bloom, told police he stood behind her wielding a 12-inch knife. Bloom is disabled and uses a wheelchair.
In another incident in 2010, Bloom said that Fields smacked her in the head and locked her in the bathroom after she told him to stop playing video games. Bloom told officers Fields was on medication to control his temper.
Meanwhile Monday evening, a crowd in Durham, North Carolina, used a rope to topple a statue of a Confederate soldier outside an old courthouse building. Seconds after the monument fell, protesters — some white, some black — began kicking the crumpled bronze monument as dozens cheered and chanted.
“I feel like this is going to send shockwaves through the country and hopefully they can bring down other racist symbols,” said protester Isaiah Wallace.
Student leaders at dozens of U.S. universities, including Ohio State University, released a statement decrying the weekend violence in Virginia and said campuses should be safe for students, not “places of violence, hate and racism.”
The statement advocates for “peaceful resistance to violence, racism, white supremacy, bigotry and acts of terrorism.”