President Trump on Tuesday sought to sanitize the stench of hate surrounding a deadly white nationalist rally in Virginia, calling armed, torch-carrying protesters clad in Nazi gear “very fine people” looking to protect their history.
Trump, in a return to his statement from Saturday, cast blame for the outbreak of savagery on “both sides” and shrugged off the evil nature that made up the core of the white supremacist groups in the crowd at the “Unite the Right” event.
“You had a lot of people in that group that were there to innocently protest and very legally protest,” the President said of the sea of people who chanted Nazi slogans, carried swastikas and wore combat gear.
Trump, speaking at a hastily called press conference on infrastructure in the lobby of his Fifth Ave. skyscraper, stood defiant in the face of criticism that he was too soft or slow to condemn the neo-Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan and other white power groups that gathered to protest the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.
“I don’t know if you know, they had a permit,” a defensive Trump added in an attempt to justify the gathering. “The other group didn’t have a permit. So I only tell you this. There are two sides to a story.”
Rally organizers were clear about their objectives ahead of the chaotic event — which claimed the life of 32-year-old paralegal Heather Heyer and two state troopers.
“The biggest thing is a show of strength,” Matthew Heimbach said leading up to the rally. “To show that our organizations that have been divided on class, been divided on religious issues, divided on ideological grounds, can put into 14 words — ‘We must secure the existence of our people and the future for white children’ — as our primary motivating factor.”
Organizer Jason Kessler told The Associated Press last week that it was “about an anti-white climate within the Western world and the need for white people to have advocacy like other groups do.”
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and National Economic Council Chairman Gary Cohn, both of whom are Jewish, stood awkwardly behind the President as he defended self-proclaimed white nationalists.
Trump tried to cast attendees as proud history buffs just looking to preserve a local statue of Lee, while those opposing them were the “alt-left.”
“So this week, it’s Robert E. Lee. I noticed that Stonewall Jackson’s coming down. Is it George Washington next week? And is it Thomas Jefferson the week after. You know, you really do have to ask yourself, where does it stop?” he said.
Trump did not differentiate between Washington and Jefferson as Founding Fathers who helped form the United States and Lee and Jackson as leaders of a rebellion that tried to destroy it.
He said that local municipalities should be in charge of deciding whether monuments linked to the Confederacy and slavery remain in place or are brought down.
Though the reason for choosing Charlottesville is linked to the statue, the event acted as a gathering point for different far-flung right-wing fringe groups to spread hate.
Among chants repeatedly shouted during marches around the city was the phrase “blood and soil,” a reworking of a famous slogan used by the Third Reich in 1930s and 1940s Germany.
Attendees included white nationalist Richard Spencer and former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, though Trump said Tuesday that he was unaware at the time of his first statement that Duke had been there.
The commander-in-chief’s sympathy for the radical edges of society was a return to his original comments after the death of Heyer, when he said that “many sides” were behind the violence, which drew heavy criticism.
Leaders from across the political spectrum criticized his abandonment of American values, and Trump changed his rhetoric Monday when he condemned “evil racism” and singled out white supremacists for the first time.
Trump said he was simply waiting to gather the facts during his first statement, and slammed neo-Nazi James Fields, who faces a murder charge for running over Heyer as she marched with counterprotesters.
“I think the driver of the car is 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,” Trump said Tuesday.
The brief moments of condemnation for the hate that led to crowds of people with torches marching through an American city did not last long.
He blamed “both sides” for the violence, correctly noting that some of the counterprotesters were armed with clubs and had been looking for trouble, while portraying those who were protesting with torches and shouting anti-Jewish slogans as “people protesting very quietly the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee.”
Trump’s White House team believed that he would take no questions at the Tuesday event, and watched him go “rogue” in front of the press, a senior official told NBC.
Members of his staff were reportedly stunned when he espoused his views off-the-cuff.
The President also spent time defending his adviser Steve Bannon, a self-professed nationalist who many suspected had influenced him into a muted response on the violence.
The President said that Bannon was a friend and “not a racist,” but also distanced himself by saying he was a late campaign addition.
“We’ll see what happens with Mr. Bannon,” he said.
The emergence of Nazi and white supremacist groups into the political spotlight had fueled outrage since the beginning of the Charlottesville demonstrations Friday night, but the President’s speech spurred a new jolt of anger.
Around 500 protesters were gathered outside Trump Tower on Tuesday evening, continuing demonstrations that started when he returned to his Manhattan home on Monday.
“This plays to the darkest elements of our society,” Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, resident Dianette Gilmore told the Daily News.
“He reaches into the recesses and gives them the power to come out. We cannot let him win, we cannot let them win.”
Politicians on both sides of the aisle issued new condemnations of the President.
“There are no ‘very fine’ white supremacists, Mr. Trump,” Gov. Cuomo said on Twitter.
“Mr. President, you can’t allow #WhiteSupremacists to share only part of blame. They support idea which cost nation & world so much pain,” Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio said.
Spencer and Duke, however, approved of the speech. “Thank you President Trump for your honesty & courage to tell the truth about #Charlottesville & condemn the leftists terrorists,” Duke said.
With Kerry Burke
