A vehicle drives into a group of protesters demonstrating against a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., on Saturday. (Ryan M. Kelly/The Daily Progress via AP)
The mayor of Charlottesville, Va., says President Trump bears responsibility for the violence that erupted during a white supremacist rally there Saturday.
“Look
at the campaign he ran,” Charlottesville Mayor Michael Signer said in
an interview with CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “I mean, look at
the intentional courting, both on the one hand of all these white
supremacists, white nationalists — a group like that — anti-Semitic
groups, and then look on the other hand the repeated failure to step up,
condemn, denounce, silence, you know, put to bed all those different
efforts, just like we saw yesterday. I mean, this is not hard.”
“I’m not going to make any bones about it,” Signer told the Virginian-Pilot.
“I place the blame for a lot of what you’re seeing in American today
right at the doorstep of the White House and the people around the
president.”
A
32-year-old woman was killed and 19 other people were injured when a
car rammed into a group of counterprotesters on Saturday in
Charlottesville, where torch-bearing demonstrators were protesting the
removal of the statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. The driver,
James Alex Fields Jr., was arrested and charged with second-degree
murder, three counts of malicious wounding and one count related to
leaving the scene. Two Virginia state troopers were killed when their
police helicopter crashed into woods near the rally.
Trump
responded to the incidents during a previously-scheduled press event at
his golf club in New Jersey Saturday afternoon, saying “many sides”
were to blame.
“We
condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of
hatred, bigotry and violence, on many sides,” the president said. “On
many sides. It’s been going on for a long time in our country. Not
Donald Trump, not Barack Obama. This has been going on for a long, long
time. It has no place in America.”
Trump was widely criticized by both Democrats and Republicans for not going far enough in opposing white supremacists and right-wing extremism.
“You
know, I sort of hung my head,” Signer said of Trump’s response to the
violence. “I mean, it’s — it was more of a lot of the same that I think
we’ve seen. But, to be honest, this is not about Donald Trump. I mean,
you know, we all talk about him a lot. I think this is about the United
States of America. It’s about Virginia. It’s about Charlottesville.”
Signer did, however, thank Trump for finally condemning “hate in speech and action.”
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