A day after United States President Donald Trump condemned white nationalists, neo-Nazis, and KKK for the violence in Charlottesville, he went back to his original statement and ended up blaming both sides yet again. In a press conference yesterday, Donald Trump compared the neo-Nazis with the other protestors at Charlottesville and stated that both sides had been equally violent.
Return to old statement
Yesterday's press conference saw the president go back to his very first statement on the Charlottesville violence when he condemned the violence and blamed both sides.
Following mass condemnation, Trump blamed the white nationalists, KKK, and neo-Nazis in his second statement, but yesterday he went back to his initial stand on the matter. The statement has attracted widespread condemnation.
In his press conference yesterday, Trump described the counter protestors as the "alt-left" and went on to state that they were just as violent as the white supremacists who had gathered in Charlottesville to protest. Describing the white nationalists at the rally, the president said that they "were people protesting very quietly the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee. I'm sure in that group there were some bad ones."
However, his comments soon ventured into the bizarre as he went on to compare Confederate General Robert E.
Lee to George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.
No, not the same. One side is racist, bigoted, Nazi. The other opposes racism and bigotry. Morally different universes.
— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) August 16, 2017
Widespread condemnation
Donald Trump's statement equating the two groups in Charlottesville has drawn widespread criticism from all quarters.
Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential nominee in 2012, took to Twitter and stated that the two groups were from "morally different universes" and could not be compared in any way whatsoever.
The 2008 nominee John McCain tweeted the same sentiments and urged the president to say that the two groups were not similar in any way.
He tweeted, “There’s no moral equivalency between racists & Americans standing up to defy hate & bigotry. The President of the United States should say so.”
According to Bloomberg, the president's advisors inside the White House were surprised by his statement. They had been led to believe that Trump was going to state that he had been consistent in his condemnation of white nationalists from the outset. However, what transpired at the press conference yesterday left many of the White House aides in a state of dismay. The coming weeks could be a public relations nightmare for the president as criticism mounts.