US President Donald Trump on Tuesday angrily defended his controversial initial response to the violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville that ended in bloodshed, saying there was "blame on both sides."

Trump has faced days of criticism over his first comments after Saturday's unrest in Charlottesville, when a rally by neo-Nazis and white supremacists over the removal of a Confederate statue erupted in clashes with counter-demonstrators.

A suspected Nazi sympathizer then plowed his car into a crowd of anti-racism protesters, leaving one woman dead and 19 others injured. The driver, James Fields, has been charged with second-degree murder.

At first, on Saturday, Trump only said there were violence "on many sides," prompting a backlash. On Monday, he singled out the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis as "criminals and thugs."

But on Tuesday, he was visibly annoyed with continued questioning about the issue.

"I think there is blame on both sides," Trump said in a rowdy exchange with reporters at Trump Tower in New York, where he was presenting infrastructure measures.

"You had a group on one side that was bad. You had a group on the other side that was also very violent. Nobody wants to say that. I'll say it right now," Trump added.

"What about the alt-left that came charging at, as you say, at the alt-right? (...) There are two sides to a story."

When asked why he waited until Monday to explicitly condemn hate groups present in Charlottesville, Trump said he wanted to be careful not to make a "quick statement" without all the facts.

"If the press were not fake and if it was honest, the press would have said what I said was very nice," the president added.

He called Fields a "disgrace to himself, his family and this country."

The president also defended his controversial far-right chief strategist Steve Bannon, saying: "I like Mr Bannon. He's a friend of mine... He is a good man. He is not a racist." </s> President Donald Trump lashed out today over criticism of his initial statement about the Charlottesville, Virginia, violence over the weekend in a confrontational press conference at Trump Tower in New York.

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Asked about his immediate response Saturday, Trump quickly blamed both sides for the conflict, adding that there were "very fine people" among both the protesters — which included white supremacists and white nationalists — and the counterprotesters.

"I think there is blame on both sides. You look at both sides. I think there is blame on both sides," Trump said today.

"You had some very bad people in that group. You also had some very fine people on both sides," he added.

Trump defended his initial remarks about the violence, saying that it "was a fine statement" and that he wanted to make sure that he had enough facts before speaking again on the issue. Trump made a second statement on Monday from the White House, in which he condemned hate groups, including the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis.

"Before I make a statement, I need the facts, so I don't want to rush into a statement. So making the statement when I made it was excellent," he said today.

Trump took issue with a reporter's characterization of some protesters as being part of the so-called alt-right — short for the "alternative right," which encompasses many far-right ideologies with racist, white nationalist and populist elements.

"When you say the alt-right, you define it. Go ahead. Define it for me," he said.

"What about the alt-left that came charging at, as you say, at the alt-right? Do they have any assemblage of guilt? What about the fact that they came charging with clubs in their hands, swinging clubs? Do they have any problem? I think they do," he said. It's unclear what he meant by the "alt-left."

Trump said that he looked at images of protests held "the night before" the violence Saturday. Photos and videos of a demonstration on Friday, Aug. 11, showed people carrying lit tiki torches on a march through the University of Virginia campus.

He went on to question why the statue of Civil War Gen. Robert E. Lee was being removed, which prompted the protest.

"You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name," he said.

"George Washington was a slave owner. Was George Washington a slave owner? So will George Washington now lose his status? Are we going to take down — excuse me," Trump said, cutting off a reporter who tried to interject. "Are we going to take down statues to George Washington? How about Thomas Jefferson? What do you think of Thomas Jefferson? You like him. Good. Are we going to take down his statue? He was a major slave owner."

Asked whether he thinks the Lee statue should remain in the park, he said he thinks it's a local issue.

Trump was also asked about his view of the driver of a car that plowed into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing a 32-year-old woman and injuring 19 others.

"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. I would just call it as the fastest one to come up with a good verdict. There is a question. Is it murder? Is it terrorism? Then you get into legal semantics," Trump said.

At one point during the press conference, he said that he "didn't know David Duke was there [at the protest]." Trump's remarks appeared to please Duke, a former Louisiana lawmaker who was once an imperial wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.

Shortly after the press conference, Duke tweeted, "Thank you President Trump for your honesty & courage to tell the truth about #Charlottesville & condemn the leftist terrorists in BLM/Antifa," he wrote, apparently referring to the Black Lives Matter and the anti-fascist movements. </s> President Donald Trump fired back against criticism of his late response to violence in Charlottesville, Virginia. This time he backed up his original comments blaming both sides again for an atmosphere that led to the car attack.



The president says that counter protesters were also to blame for the violence in Charlottesville. His staff was not expecting the president to take these questions.



President Donald Trump defiant, passionate, saying both sides were to blame for the violence that led to the death of one woman in Charlottesville, Virginia. "What about the alt left they came charging at the alt right, do they have any semblance of guilt? What about they came charging with clubs in their hand, do they have any problem? I think they do," said President Donald Trump.



The president says he condemned neo-Nazi's and white supremacists, but then doubled down on the shared blame for atmosphere of violence in Charlottesville. "You had a group you had a group on the other side that came charging in without a permit and they were very, very violent," said the president.



Both Republicans and Democrats lined up to criticize the president. "That's unacceptable. The President was wrong to do that. And I've said that loud and clear," said Senator Cory Gardner, (R) Colorado. 



Senator Marco Rubio tweeting the president needs to call events in Charlottesville a "terror attack by white supremacists."



Senator Bernie Sanders on twitter called the president embarrassing to all the "Americans who fought and died to defeat Nazism."



Two group leaders publicly defended the president's comments as fair - the former head of the KKK, David Duke and white nationalist leader Richard Spencer.



Because of this.. Now six CEO's from the president's manufacturing council resigned. The president says they don't take their job seriously. </s> Hundreds of anti-Trump protesters gather near Trump Tower in New York

Hundreds of protesters against the policies of US President Donald Trump gathered in New York on Monday evening, Sputnik reported.

The demonstrators started arriving at the site near Trump Tower at 5 p.m. Trump is expected to arrive at his residence during the night.

The police protected the building using trucks with sand, and the sidewalk was fenced along Fifth Avenue.

According to media reports, the rally was organized, among other reasons, to show dissatisfaction with Trump’s initial failure to condemn the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Trump condemned the violence at the Charlottesville rally, stating that the events were a "display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides." However, the US president initially refrained from blaming any particular group for the outbreak of violence and faced huge criticism over this fact. Later Trump directly condemned neo-Nazis and white supremacists in a statement.

On Saturday, white nationalists organized a "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville to protest the removal of the Robert E. Lee monument at a downtown park. The rally subsequently led to clashes and culminated in the car ramming attack that killed one person and injured more than 30 people. In addition, two Virginia State Police troopers died when their helicopter crashed, as they patrolled near the site of clashes. </s> NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump returned insistently Tuesday to his assessment that “there is blame on both sides” after being roundly criticized for such comments following the deadly violence last weekend in Charlottesville, Virginia.

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 press conference Tuesday, Trump seemed to undo what he said a day earlier.

He praised his own controversial 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. </s> NEW YORK — A combative U.S. President Donald Trump insisted Tuesday “there is blame on both sides” for the deadly violence last weekend in Charlottesville, Va., appearing to once again equate the actions of white supremacist groups and those protesting them.

The president’s comments effectively wiped away the more conventional statement he delivered at the White House one day earlier when he branded members of the KKK, neo-Nazis and white supremacists who take part in violence as “criminals and thugs.” Trump’s advisers had hoped those remarks might quell a crush of criticism from both Republicans and Democrats.

The president’s retorts Tuesday suggested he had been a reluctant participant in that cleanup effort. During an impromptu press conference in the lobby of his Manhattan skyscraper, he praised his original response to Charlottesville and angrily blamed liberal groups in addition to white supremacist for the 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 still aren’t known.

His remarks were welcomed by former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, who tweeted: “Thank you President Trump for your honesty & courage to tell the truth.”

Democrats were aghast at Trump’s comments. Sen. Brian Schatz, a Hawaii Democrat, said on Twitter that he no longer views Trump as his president.

“As a Jew, as an American, as a human, words cannot express my disgust and disappointment,” Schatz said. “This is not my president.”

As Trump talked, his aides on the sidelines of the lobby stood in silence. Chief of staff John Kelly crossed his arms and stared down at his shoes, barely glancing at the president. Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders looked around the room trying to make eye contact with other senior aides. One young staffer stood with her mouth agape.

When asked to explain his Saturday comments about Charlottesville, Trump looked down at his notes and again read a section of his initial statement that denounced bigotry but did not single out white supremacists. He then tucked the paper back into his jacket pocket.

Violence broke out Saturday in Charlottesville, a picturesque college town, after a loosely connected mix of white nationalists, neo-Nazis and other far-right extremists assembled for the largest gathering of its kind in a decade. Heather Heyer, 32, was killed when a man plowed his car into a crowd of counter-protesters.

Trump, who has quickly deemed other deadly incidents in the U.S. and around the world acts of terrorism, waffled when asked whether the car death was a terrorist attack.

“There is a question. Is it murder? Is it terrorism?” Trump said. “And then you get into legal semantics. The driver of the car is a murderer and what he did was a horrible, horrible, inexcusable thing.”

Trump said he had yet to call Heyer’s mother, said that he would soon “reach out.” He praised her for what he said was a nice statement about him on social media.

As Trump finally walked away from his lectern, he stopped to answer one more shouted question: Would be plan to visit Charlottesville? The president’s response was to note that he owned property there and to say it was one of the largest wineries in the United States. </s> WASHINGTON — The Latest on President Trump and the Charlottesville, Virginia violence (all times local):

President Donald Trump is blasting the CEOs who resigned from his manufacturing jobs council in the wake of the violence stemming from a white supremacist rally this past weekend in Charlottesville, Virginia, that led to the death of one counter-protester.

The president says on Twitter, “For every CEO that drops out of the Manufacturing Council, I have many to take their place. Grandstanders should not have gone on. JOBS!”

Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, announced his resignation Tuesday, a day after a raft of departures by CEOs heading large U.S. corporations.

The heads of pharmaceutical giant Merck, the sports gear company Under Armour and the tech firm Intel decided to leave the advisory council. Trump initially criticized the violence on many sides, rather than singling out the white supremacists. The president on Monday later said condemned groups tied to racism.

Trump has not said if who will join his council as replacements.

The leaders of four minority House caucus groups have written a letter to President Donald Trump calling for the removal of White House staff aides Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller and Sebastian Gorka.

The heads of the black, Hispanic, Asian and progressive caucuses are calling in the letter for the firings of the Trump administration officials in the wake of a violent, racist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. The letter asserts their continuing presence in the White House is emboldening a resurgent white supremacist movement in America.

“Americans deserve to know that white nationalists, white supremacists, and neo-Nazis are not in a position to influence U.S. policy,” says the letter dated Monday. “In this time of tumult in our country, Americans deserve a leader that will bring us all together and denounce those who seek to tear us apart.”

President Donald Trump is back in the New York skyscraper that bears his name as the furor over his reaction to race-fueled clashes in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend shows few signs of dying down.

Protesters on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue tried to spoil Trump’s homecoming Monday night with signs bearing messages like “stop the hate, stop the lies” and chanting “shame, shame, shame” and “not my president!”

After two days of public equivocation and internal White House debate, the president condemned white supremacist groups by name on Monday, declaring “racism is evil”.

In a hastily arranged statement at the White House, Trump branded members of the KKK, neo-Nazis and white supremacists who take part in violence as “criminals and thugs.”

The groups are “repugnant to everything that we hold dear as Americans,” he said. </s> 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."

[PRESIDENT TRUMP: Timeline, appointments, executive orders + guide to actions in first 200 days]

"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."

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.

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. </s> Washington, Aug 16 (EFE).- The president of the United States dissolved two business adversary councils on Wednesday after several chief executive officers quit over his remarks about last weekend’s violence in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Those same comments also have sparked condemnation from Donald Trump’s fellow Republicans, who accused him of drawing a moral equivalence between neo-Nazis and the leftist activists they clashed with on Saturday.

Trump disbanded the American Manufacturing Council, which had seen a gradual exodus of its members – including the CEOs of Intel, Merck, Under Armour and the president of the US’s largest labor federation, the AFL-CIO – since Monday, and the Strategic and Policy Forum, whose members decided to step down en masse on Wednesday.

“Rather than putting pressure on the businesspeople of the Manufacturing Council & Strategy (sic) & Policy Forum, I am ending both. Thank you all!” Trump tweeted.

Fifteen members still remained on the manufacturing council, including the CEOs of Boeing, General Electric, Dow Chemical, Lockheed Martin and Johnson & Johnson.

Trump was broadly criticized for his remarks at a Tuesday press conference about the events in Charlottesville, where white supremacists had obtained permits for a Saturday rally to protest plans to remove a statue in that city of Gen. Robert E. Lee, the army commander of the pro-slavery Confederacy during the 1861-1865 American Civil War.

Although Virginia’s Democratic governor declared a state of emergency and canceled the rally before it was scheduled to begin, clashes broke out between protesters and counter-demonstrators.

The situation turned deadly Saturday afternoon when a suspected neo-Nazi plowed his car into a crowd at an intersection in Charlottesville, killing one female counter-protester and injuring more than a dozen other people.

On Tuesday, Trump grew irritated at journalists who pressed him to more vehemently denounce the far-right protesters and said leftist activists had also acted lawlessly.

“You 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’ll say it right now. You had a group – you had a group on the other side that came charging in without a permit, and they were very, very violent,” the president said.

In his most controversial remarks, Trump spoke favorably of some of the people protesting the removal of the statue.

“Not all of those people were neo-Nazis, believe me. Not all of those people were white supremacists by any stretch.”

Trump’s remarks have been criticized by several prominent members of his party, including Sens. John McCain and Marco Rubio; the speaker of the House of Representatives, Paul Ryan; and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

“There are no good neo-Nazis, and those who espouse their views are not supporters of American ideals and freedoms. We all have a responsibility to stand against hate and violence, wherever it raises its evil head,” McConnell said.

Two former Republican presidents – George H. W. Bush and his son, George W. Bush – issued a statement shortly after Trump’s remarks.

“America must always reject racial bigotry, antisemitism and hatred in all its forms,” the Bushes said, without referring to white supremacists.
During a press conference at Trump Tower in New York City, which was intended to announce an executive order on infrastructure policy, President Donald Trump defended his August 12 remarks about the Charlottesville rally, placing "blame on both sides" for the incidents at the rally and criticizing what he referred to as the "alt-left," equating them with white supremacists and neo-Nazis on the right.