{"id":35791,"date":"2017-08-16T11:01:03","date_gmt":"2017-08-16T11:01:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/en.bornomalanews.com\/?p=35791"},"modified":"2017-08-16T11:01:03","modified_gmt":"2017-08-16T11:01:03","slug":"trump-casts-blame-on-both-sides-for-virginia-violence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/en.bornomalanews.com\/?p=35791","title":{"rendered":"Trump casts blame on both sides for Virginia violence"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Donald-Trump50\"Appearing angry and irritated, the president maintained that his original reaction was based on the facts he had at the time<\/strong><\/p>\n

US President Donald Trump insisted on Tuesday that left- and right-wing extremists became violent during a weekend rally by white nationalists in Virginia, reigniting a political firestorm over US race relations and his own leadership of a national crisis.<\/p>\n

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Trump, who drew sharp criticism from Republicans and Democrats for his initial response, reverted on Tuesday to his position that both sides were at fault for the violence, a day after bowing to pressure to explicitly condemn the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups.<\/p>\n

Appearing angry and irritated, the president maintained that his original reaction was based on the facts he had at the time.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou had a group on one side that was bad, and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent. And nobody wants to say that, but I\u2019ll say it right now,\u201d Trump said, referring to right- and left-wing protesters.From there, the back and forth with reporters turned tense.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot all of those people were neo-Nazis, believe me. Not all of those people were white supremacists by any stretch,\u201d Trump said of the deadly protest. \u201cThere was a group on this side. You can call them the left\u00a0that came violently attacking the other group. So you can say what you want, but that\u2019s the way it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

The violence erupted on Saturday after white nationalists converged in Charlottesville for a \u201cUnite the Right\u201d rally in protest of plans to remove a statue of Robert E Lee, commander of the pro-slavery Confederate army during the US Civil War.<\/p>\n

Many of the rally participants were seen carrying firearms, sticks and shields. Some also wore helmets. Counter-protesters likewise came equipped with sticks, helmets and shields.<\/p>\n

The two sides clashed in scattered street brawls before a car plowed into the rally opponents, killing one woman and injuring 19 others. A 20-year-old Ohio man, James Fields, said to have harboured Nazi sympathies, was charged with murder.<\/p>\n

Two state police officers also were killed that day in the fiery crash of the helicopter they were flying in as part of crowd-control operations.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany sides\u201d<\/p>\n

Addressing the melee for the first time on Saturday, Trump denounced hatred and violence \u201con many sides.\u201d The comment drew sharp criticism across the political spectrum for not explicitly condemning the white nationalists whose presence in the Southern college town was widely seen as having provoked the unrest.<\/p>\n

Critics said Trump\u2019s remarks then belied his reluctance to alienate extreme right-wing organizations, whose followers constitute a devoted segment of his political base despite his disavowal of them.<\/p>\n

Yielding two days later to a mounting political furore over his initial response, Trump delivered a follow-up message expressly referring to the \u201cKKK, neo-Nazis and white supremacists and other hate groups\u201d as \u201crepugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s detractors dismissed his revised statements as too little too late, but his remarks newly inflamed the controversy.<\/p>\n

Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke immediately applauded Trump on Twitter.<\/p>\n

\u201cThank you President Trump for your honesty & courage to tell the truth about #Charlottesville & condemn the leftist terrorists in BLM\/Antifa,\u201d Duke wrote, referring to Black Lives Matter (BLM) and anti-facists.<\/p>\n

Democrats seized on Trump\u2019s latest words as evidence that Trump sees white nationalists and those protesting against them as morally equivalent.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy saying he is not taking sides, Donald Trump clearly is,\u201d Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer of New York, said. \u201cWhen David Duke and white supremacists cheer your remarks, you\u2019re doing it very, very wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a similar vein, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, said Trump\u2019s characterization of the violence missed the mark.<\/p>\n

\u201cNeo-Nazis, Klansmen and white supremacists came to Charlottesville heavily armed, spewing hatred and looking for a fight. One of them murdered a young woman in an act of domestic terrorism, and two of our finest officers were killed in a tragic accident while serving to protect this community. This was not \u2018both sides,\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Administration officials, hoping to put the controversy behind them after the remarks on Monday, worried that the controversy would now last for days and potentially affect the president\u2019s ability to made legislative and policy achievements.<\/p>\n

Asked about the White House\u2019s next steps, one official said: \u201cI think next steps are just to stop talking.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fallout<\/p>\n

Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO labour federation representing 12.5 million workers, became the latest member of Trump\u2019s advisory American Manufacturing Council to resign in protest, saying, \u201cWe cannot sit on a council for a president who tolerates bigotry and domestic terrorism,\u201d Trumka said. \u201cPresident Trump\u2019s remarks today repudiate his forced remarks yesterday about the KKK and neo-Nazis.\u201d<\/p>\n

Three other members of the council – the chief executives of pharmaceutical maker Merck & Co Inc, sportswear company Under Armour Inc and computer chipmaker Intel Corp – resigned on Monday.<\/p>\n

In his remarks on Tuesday, Trump also sympathised with protesters seeking to keep Lee\u2019s statue in place but offered no equivalent remarks for those who favoured its removal.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou had people in that group … that were there to protest the taking down of a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E Lee to another name,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n

Trump also grouped former presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, two of the nation\u2019s founding fathers, together with Confederate leaders such as Lee, Jefferson Davis and Stonewall Jackson, who fought to separate Southern states from the Union, noting that all were slave owners.<\/p>\n

Read more\u201cWas George Washington a slave owner? Will George Washington now lose his status? Are we going to take down statues to George Washington? How about Thomas Jefferson? … Because he was a major slave owner,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, Trump explained his initial restrained response by saying: \u201cThe statement I made on Saturday, the first statement, was a fine statement, but you don\u2019t make statements that direct unless you know the facts. It takes a little while to get the facts.\u201d<\/p>\n

In what became at times a heated exchange with reporters shouting questions, Trump said, \u201cYou also had people that were very fine people on both sides.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said that while neo-Nazis and white nationalists \u201cshould be condemned totally,\u201d Trump said protesters in the other group \u201calso had trouble-makers. And you see them come with the black outfits and with the helmets and with the baseball bats. You got a lot of bad people in the other group too.\u201dAFP.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Appearing angry and irritated, the president maintained that his original reaction was based on the facts he had at the time US President Donald Trump insisted on Tuesday that left- and right-wing extremists became violent during a weekend rally by white nationalists in Virginia, reigniting a political firestorm over US race relations and his own […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":35792,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,14],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\n\n\t\n