Trump points to 'both sides' in deadly rally

President Donald Trump reverted Tuesday to blaming both sides for deadly violence over the weekend 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 an exchange with reporters at Trump Tower in Manhattan, the president repeatedly rejected a torrent of bipartisan criticism he has received for waiting several days before naming the rightist groups and for initially placing blame on "many sides" for the violence Saturday that ended in the death of a woman when 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 nationalist and Nazi groups that had gathered in the Virginian college town to protest the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee from a park. He said there is "blame on both sides."

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"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.

Lawmakers took to Twitter to denounce Trump's statements.

Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan wrote: "We must be clear. White supremacy is repulsive. This bigotry is counter to all this country stands for. There can be no moral ambiguity."

"Blaming 'both sides' for #Charlottesville?! No," wrote Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla. "Back to relativism when dealing with KKK, Nazi sympathizers, white supremacists? Just no."

"No words," said Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va.

Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, however, seemed thrilled, tweeting a link to Trump's Tuesday comments and saying, "Thank you President Trump for your honesty & courage to tell the truth about #Charlottesville & condemn the leftist terrorists in BLM/Antifa," referring to the Black Lives Matter movement and an anti-fascist group.

Trump defended those gathered in the Charlottesville park to protest the statue's removal, saying: "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 the protesters were not all Nazis or white supremacists, and he said it was unfair to suggest that they were. He 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 showed up 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 James Alex Fields Jr., 20, the suspected driver of the car that crashed into the crowd, "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.

The president's remarks during a news conference about repairing infrastructure was a rejection of the more measured language about the unrest that Trump offered in a brief statement Monday from the White House.

In that statement, Trump appeared to distance himself from his claims Saturday that multiple sides were to blame for the weekend violence. But on Tuesday, Trump returned to his initial feelings about the subject, which poured out without much prompting from reporters at Trump Tower.

"There are two sides to a story. I thought what took place was horrible moment for our country, a horrible moment. But there are two sides to the country," the president said.

Andrew Anglin, the publisher of The Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website, had praised Trump's initial reaction to the violence Saturday as "no condemnation at all ... really really good. God bless him."

Anglin dismissed Trump's Monday statement as "childish nonsense." In an email to The Associated Press before Trump's latest statements, Anglin said, "If he actually believed that nonsense, or was planning on implementing it as policy, he would have said it before being bullied into it by the international thought police."

By Tuesday afternoon, The Daily Stormer posted an article entitled, "Trump Defends Charlottesville Nazis Against Jew Media Lies, Condemns Antifa Terrorists."

Trump said Tuesday that his Saturday statement was shaped by a lack of information about the events on the ground in Charlottesville, even though television statements had been broadcasting images of the violence throughout the morning.

"There was no way of making a correct statement that early," the president said. "I had to see the facts, unlike a lot of reporters. I didn't know David Duke was there. I wanted to see the facts."

But Trump also made it clear that even now -- with the benefit of hindsight -- he does not accept the overwhelming criticism that he should have reserved his condemnation for the white supremacist and Nazi groups.

Referring to the reporters assembled, he insisted that he had watched the protests "much more closely than you people watched it." He said he believes there were "bad" people on both sides, and he criticized others for being unwilling to say that.

"You had a group on one side that was bad. You had a group on the other side that was also very violent," the president said. "Nobody wants to say that. I'll say it right now. You had a group on the other side that came charging in without a permit and they were very, very violent."

Asked whether he considers the "alt-left" as the same as neo-Nazis, Trump said: "I've condemned neo-Nazis. I've condemned many different groups."

And he said it should be "up to a local town, community" to say whether the statue of Robert E. Lee should remain in place.

N.C. and Texas

To Virginia's south, North Carolina's governor said Tuesday that he wants to bring down Confederate monuments around his state.

Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper's call to remove the monuments from public property came as a sheriff began arresting people responsible for tearing down a nearly century-old Confederate statue in Durham on Monday night.

North Carolina is among three states with the most Confederate monuments, but the Republican-controlled General Assembly passed a law in 2015 preventing their removal without legislative approval. Cooper faces an uphill battle against legislative leaders, who hold veto-proof majorities.

"We cannot continue to glorify a war against the United States of America fought in the defense of slavery," Cooper said in a statement. "These monuments should come down."

Around the time of Cooper's announcement, deputies were arresting the woman who climbed the statue in Durham and attached the rope that was used to tear it down.

During a news conference held Tuesday by protest organizers, Takiyah Thompson identified herself as the woman who climbed the statue. She said her actions were a justified response to white supremacists.

"The statue had to go, and it's linked to white supremacy that we see today," said the 22-year-old college student.

After the news conference, sheriff's deputies arrived and took her away in handcuffs. The sheriff's office said she's charged with two felonies related to inciting and participating in a riot that damaged property, along with two misdemeanors. Investigators said late Tuesday that they expect to make other arrests.

Separately, Texas A&M University canceled a "White Lives Matter" event scheduled to be held on its campus Sept. 11, citing safety concerns.

The university said in a statement Monday that it canceled the event scheduled by former student Preston Wiginton after "consultation with law enforcement and considerable study." The event was expected to be held outdoors on Sept. 11, at Rudder Plaza, located in the middle of campus in College Station.

Wiginton was not invited by a campus organization, nor had any agreed to sponsor him, the school said. His notification to the news media about the event was headlined: "Today Charlottesville Tomorrow Texas A&M," which A&M noted in its statement.

"Linking the tragedy of Charlottesville with the Texas A&M event creates a major security risk on our campus," the statement said. "Additionally, the daylong event would provide disruption to our class schedules and to student, faculty and staff movement (both bus system and pedestrian)."

In a phone interview, Wiginton denied that his phrasing was a reference to the violence that had occurred in Charlottesville.

"Obviously, there are many white people in America who are angry and Charlottesville was a large gathering to express that anger and hopefully to address those issues," Wiginton said when asked about the phrasing. "So 'tomorrow A&M' meant another platform for us to be able to express ourselves."

Wiginton said he wanted to hold the event on a day when many students would be on campus, and one that would be easier for nonstudents to attend. He said the date was not selected because of a connection to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

"Not at all. I consulted with many millennials," he said. "And the millennials don't really relate to 9/11."

Information for this article was contributed by Michael D. Shear and Maggie Haberman of The New York Times; by Michael Kunzelman, Jonathan Drew, Gary D. Robertson and Allen G. Breed of The Associated Press; and by Sarah Larimer of The Washington Post.

A Section on 08/16/2017