White nationalist protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend drew bipartisan condemnation, particularly after a car plowed into counter-protesters, killing one person and injuring more than a dozen. Many observers called the apparent attack an act of domestic terrorism. “Go home,” Virginia Gov. McAuliffe, a Democrat, told white supremacists in a press conference Saturday. “You are not wanted in this great commonwealth.” GOP House Speaker Paul Ryan called white supremacism a “scourge” and said that, “Hate and terrorism must be confronted and defeated.” 
 
 President Trump’s response to the violence, by contrast, was comparatively mild and, in the view of many commenters, inadequate. Trump tweeted that we should “come together as one” in the face of hatred and violence and called the events in Charlottesville “sad!” In a short statement from his golf course in New Jersey on Saturday, he said Americans need to reject violence “from many sides.” But as of Sunday morning, he had yet to denounce the white supremacist protesters specifically, and he declined to label the car crash an act of terrorism. (On Saturday, Charlottesville police charged a man, apparently the driver of the car, with second-degree murder.) 
 
 Trump’s comments are striking for a couple of reasons. For one, Trump repeatedly denounced his predecessor, Barack Obama, for refusing to use the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism” to refer to attacks by Islamist radicals. For another, denouncing Friday’s white supremacist protest and Saturday’s (apparent) attack should have been comparatively easy for an American politician. In recent years, political norms emphasizing “colorblindness” in public life have made it tough for presidents to talk about structural racism, but rejecting rallies and groups like the ones coming together in Charlottesville should be straightforward. Photographs and press reports indicated that some of Friday and Saturday’s protesters gave Nazi salutes and chanted slogans associated with the Nazis, and at least one person carried a Nazi flag. 
 
 There is a long history of U.S. presidents proving reluctant to take strong stands in response to racial violence. Democratic and Republican presidents alike were unable and, often, unwilling, to address the most egregious abuses of the Jim Crow South. And that caution extended well into the modern era. Political realities have meant that presidents have rarely led the way on race relations, but Trump’s response to the events in Charlottesville stands out for lagging so far behind. 
 
 In 1906, for example, a group of African-American soldiers in Brownsville, Texas, was accused of shooting multiple people. They were acquitted by a court and there was no real evidence of their guilt — but President Theodore Roosevelt issued a dishonorable discharge for all of the accused soldiers. Roosevelt’s critics accused him of placating the angry mob for political reasons, as Roosevelt’s Republican Party had long tried to make electoral progress in the South. 
 
 Later in the 20th century, several presidents struggled to respond to lynchings, the violent, extra-judicial killing of African-Americans accused of crimes. (Recent estimates suggest that nearly 4,000 people died this way in the South between 1877 and 1950.) The NAACP had to lobby both Democrat Woodrow Wilson (who held and acted on racist views) and his Republican successor Warren G. Harding. Wilson did eventually speak out against lynching, but it took several years of lobbying by the NAACP to convince him to do so. As political scientist Megan Francis has written, “Only through an unyielding onslaught of protest was [the NAACP] able to obtain support from Wilson.” Harding, meanwhile, made some initial statements about lynching, Francis found, but did not continue to pressure Congress to adopt anti-lynching legislation. Like Theodore Roosevelt, he was limited by his party’s ambitions in the South. 
 
 Even in cases when presidents did end up taking more aggressive action on racial issues, they often did so reluctantly. In 1957, for example, Dwight Eisenhower sent federal troops (and federalized the Arkansas National Guard) to quell unrest in Little Rock, Arkansas, and enforce a court decision mandating the racial integration of schools. But Eisenhower took that step only after the crisis had been going on for three weeks, and he avoided addressing the substance of the ruling or the question of civil rights, instead citing the need to enforce the law. Eisenhower’s successor, John F. Kennedy, was also slow to move forward civil rights, although he eventually found his voice on the issue as political pressure mounted. In June, 1963, Kennedy addressed the nation on the question of civil rights and urged Congress to pass legislation, which he had previously been reluctant to pursue. 
 
 More recent presidents have faced a somewhat different set of issues. Since the passage of civil rights legislation in the 1960s, presidents have been able to embrace the principles of racial equality without fear of political backlash. But they have still often struggled to respond to racially charged situations. In 2005, President George W. Bush sparked outrage with his slow response as Hurricane Katrina wrought destruction in New Orleans, especially in predominantly black sections of the city. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus tied the slow federal response to the race of those affected by the flood. In response, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the most prominent black official in the administration, defended its record on race. 
 
 In 2014, Obama urged calm after the announcement that the police officer who shot Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, would not be charged, and many networks showed him speaking on a split screen alongside images of Ferguson descending into disorder. In both cases, the leaders appeared disconnected from the suffering of their citizens, at least in the moment. For different reasons, Bush and Obama faced delicate political situations. Bush led a party that had equated government assistance with moral degeneracy, a theme that came up as criticism piled up over the anemic federal response to the disaster. For Obama, the question of race was perpetually complex and fraught. 
 
 Presidential responses to racial violence and injustice have not all been discouraging. In the wake of Kennedy’s assassination and years of build-up from the civil rights movement, Lyndon Johnson staked his legacy on the issue. As a presidential candidate, Obama addressed the nation candidly about prejudices and fears. Obama’s eulogy for the slain pastor Clementa Pinckney is considered one of his most powerful speeches. And in a piece of rhetoric that gets less attention, George H. W. Bush responded to the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles by turning attention to the police violence against King. 
 
 Although racial politics have changed, the political dilemma facing presidents is dismayingly familiar. When it comes to race questions, presidents have sought to balance competing groups and their concerns. Presidents are products of their times — and they are politicians. In this sense, Trump’s bland equivocation fits right in. When it comes to race relations in the United States, presidents rarely cut through politics to express bold statements about equality; rather, they tend to be caught up in political conflict, and respond only to sustained pressure. 
 
 But history doesn’t absolve Trump. His tepid response to such overt and violent racism recalls a much earlier era, when people who espoused these violent ideologies held real political power. The political calculus for a contemporary president should be different. Congressional Republicans, for example, like Marco Rubio and Cory Gardner have asked the president to more strongly condemn what’s happened. Presidents have typically lagged behind the racial justice activists of their day — sometimes far behind. But Trump is unusual in also lagging behind today’s widely understood norms. 
 
 This weekend is not, of course, the first time that Trump has appeared reluctant to denounce white nationalists or other racist groups and individuals, many of whom supported his presidential campaign last year. He retweeted accounts and memes with ties to white supremacist groups, and he waited until deep into the campaign before firmly disavowing the support of former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke. That suggests that Trump’s cautious statements, like those of past presidents, may stem in part from his reluctance to alienate a key group of supporters; in Trump’s case, however, those key supporters include avowed racists. ||||| poster="http://v.politico.com/images/1155968404/201708/481/1155968404_5540813852001_5540808101001-vs.jpg?pubId=1155968404" true Trump declares 'racism is evil' amid pressure over Charlottesville The president was widely criticized for waiting until Monday to specifically condemn the hate groups that marched over the weekend. 
 
 President Donald Trump on Monday denounced the white supremacist groups whose rally in Virginia on Saturday turned deadly, criticizing “racist violence” in remarks that were much more direct in their condemnation than his initial, widely panned response. 
 
 “Racism is evil. And those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans,” Trump said in televised remarks Monday afternoon from the White House. “Those who spread violence in the name of bigotry strike at the very core of America.” 
 
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 Trump's remarks in the White House's Diplomatic Reception Room lasted just longer than five minutes, and his comments on Saturday's episode in Charlottesville were preceded by a preamble in which the president touted his administration's economic successes. Nowhere in his remarks did he label Saturday's clash, which left one woman dead, an act of terrorism, a characterization others in his administration and other Republicans have used. 
 
 That the president waited until Monday to specifically condemn the hate groups that marched over the weekend had raised eyebrows and recalled multiple episodes from his 2016 campaign in which the president was forced to distance himself, often after a delay and under public pressure, from symbolism and language tied to white supremacist and anti-Semitic groups. On Monday, Trump did not respond to reporters' shouted questions as to why it had taken him two days to explicitly denounce white supremacy. 
 
 Attorney General Jeff Sessions and newly installed FBI Director Christopher Wray briefed Trump on Monday before his statement on the clashes in Charlottesville. 
 
 Earlier in the day, administration officials rushed to defend Trump's first response to the weekend's deadly violence, insisting that he had already condemned the ideology of hate groups. Those groups, ostensibly gathered for a rally to protest the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, clashed with counterprotesters. The violence peaked when a man drove a car into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing one woman and injuring 19 other people, authorities said. 
 
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 The president’s first comments came Saturday from his club in Bedminster, New Jersey, where he decried “this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides.” A White House statement Sunday sought to clarify the president's position as condemning white supremacists, but the statement was attributed only to an unnamed White House official, stoking questions about why it was issued behind a cloak of anonymity. 
 
 Trump's initial statement that "many sides" were to blame struck critics as equating the actions of hate groups with those of counterprotesters. Vice President Mike Pence, however, told NBC that Trump was referring to past, unrelated protests in which there were attacks on law enforcement. 
 
 Sessions insisted there was no ambiguity in the president’s initial statement. 
 
 "He made a very strong statement that directly contradicted the ideology of hatred, violence, bigotry, racism and white supremacy," Sessions told NBC’s “Today” show Monday. "Those things must be condemned. They're totally unacceptable. ... He's been firm on this from the beginning. He is appalled by this." 
 
 It was unclear Monday why Trump finally decided to make additional remarks or whether it would stem the flow of withering bipartisan criticism. 
 
 Prominent Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) wrote online after Trump's first statement, “We should call evil by its name. My brother didn't give his life fighting Hitler for Nazi ideas to go unchallenged here at home.” 
 
 Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, addressed Trump directly on Twitter, writing: “Mr. President — we must call evil by its name. These were white supremacists and this was domestic terrorism.” 
 
 Michael Signer, Charlottesville’s Democratic mayor, told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Monday that Trump’s remarks had left the president “on the sidelines” of a “country that really needs to progress and heal and tell the truth about a lot of chapters in our history.” Signer, who was among those urging Electoral College voters not to certify Trump’s 2016 victory, connected the violence in his city over the weekend to the president’s campaign. 
 
 “Look, I think some of this speaks for itself. We saw the campaign that they ran, we saw the folks they surround themselves, we saw what [former Ku Klux Klan leader] David Duke, you know, people like that say about the president,” Signer said. “I think that Charlottesville is going to be synonymous with the nation at long last turning the page on this horrific chapter in American politics where bigots and, you know, the fringe of the fringe were invited into the mainstream, out from the shadows where they belonged.” 
 
 Trump’s handling of the issue could even disrupt his policy agenda. Merck CEO Kenneth Frazier announced via his company’s Twitter account Monday morning that he would resign from the president’s American Manufacturing Council. Frazier wrote that “our country’s strength stems from its diversity.” 
 
 “America’s leaders must honor our fundamental values by clearly rejecting expressions of hatred, bigotry and group supremacy, which run counter to the American ideal that all people are created equal,” Frazier's statement said. “As CEO of Merck and as a matter of personal conscience, I feel a responsibility to take a stand against intolerance and extremism.” 
 
 Trump responded on Twitter by attacking Merck: “Now that Ken Frazier of Merck Pharma has resigned from President's Manufacturing Council, he will have more time to LOWER RIPOFF DRUG PRICES!” 
 
 Hours later, two other CEOs announced they were leaving the council. The first was Under Armour's Kevin Plank, who said in a company tweet, "There is no place for racism or discrimination in this world." 
 
 "I love our country & company," he added. "I am stepping down from the council to focus on inspiring & uniting through power of sport." 
 
 A short while later Intel's chief, Brian Krzanich, wrote in a company blog that he was resigning "to call attention to the serious harm our divided political climate is causing to critical issues." 
 
 He concluded: "My request — my plea — to everyone involved in our political system is this: set scoring political points aside and focus on what is best for the nation as a whole. The current environment must change, or else our nation will become a shadow of what it once was and what it still can and should be." 
 
 Josh Gerstein contributed to this report.
– President Trump marked the eve of the Charlottesville-riot anniversary with a tweet that—surprise, surprise—may be dividing the nation, USA Today reports. "The riots in Charlottesville a year ago resulted in senseless death and division," the president tweeted Saturday. "We must come together as a nation. I condemn all types of racism and acts of violence. Peace to ALL Americans!" For some, Trump's tweet recalled his remarks after fighting broke out in Charlottesville, Va., last year and three people were killed: "You had some very bad people in that group," he said at the time, referring to white nationalists, "but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides." "'All types.' 'Both sides.' Continuing to advance a narrative of moral equivalency between racists and those opposed to racism, so as not to tick off his white supremacist supporters," NAACP official Sherrilyn Ifill tweeted. Richard Cohen, head of the South Poverty Law Center, said white people think "they're the ones being targeted for racism and a lot of these people are Trump supporters so when the president makes a comment like this with 'all types' it's hard not to be suspicious." Meanwhile, white nationalist Jason Kessler—who organized last year's Charlottesville demonstration—was refused a permit there this year but has been allowed to hold a rally Sunday across the street from the White House, Reuters reports.