3:50 P.M. UPDATE:
NEW YORK — President Donald Trump returned insistently Tuesday to his assessment that "there is blame on both sides" after being roundly criticized for such comments after the deadly violence last weekend in Charlottesville, Va.
Trump's remarks on his home turf at Trump Tower in New York City followed a more deliberate statement he made Monday in Washington. Reading from prepared remarks inside the White House, he said then that "racism is evil" and branded members of the KKK, neo-Nazis and white supremacists who take part in violence as "criminals and thugs."
That statement followed sharp and unrelenting criticism, including from many top Republican lawmakers, of his more general Saturday remarks bemoaning violence on "many sides."
Yet during an impromptu news conference Tuesday, Trump praised his Saturday statement, even pulling it from his suit pocket to read it again.
And he followed that recitation by angrily laying blame on liberal groups in addition to white supremacists for the Charlottesville violence. Some of those protesting the rally to save a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee were "also very violent," he said.
"There are two sides to a story," he said. He added that some facts about the violence in Charlottesville still aren't known.
Read Wednesday's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for full details.
EARLIER:
WASHINGTON — A fourth business leader resigned Tuesday from President Donald Trump's White House jobs council after his equivocal original response to violence by white supremacists in Charlottesville, Va.
The parade of departing leaders includes the chief executives for Merck, Under Armour and Intel and now the president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing.
Alliance president Scott Paul, in a tweet, said simply, "I'm resigning from the Manufacturing Jobs Initiative because it's the right thing for me to do." Within minutes of the tweet, calls to Paul's phone were being sent to voicemail.
Corporate leaders have been willing to work with Trump on taxes, trade and reducing regulations, but they've increasingly found themselves grappling with cultural and social divides amid his lightning rod-style of leadership. The CEOs who left the council quickly faced his anger.
On Tuesday, Trump tweeted, "For every CEO that drops out of the Manufacturing Council, I have many to take their place. Grandstanders should not have gone on. JOBS!"
Merck CEO Kenneth Frazier, one of only four African-Americans to lead a Fortune 500 company today, was the first to tender his resignation Monday.
He was assailed almost immediately by Trump on Twitter.
Then came resignations from Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank and then Intel CEO Brian Krzanich.