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 speaks to the media in the lobby of Trump Tower in New York, Tuesday, Aug. 15, 2017.

Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP</s>WASHINGTON, D.C.-- President Donald Trump directly condemned white supremacists and neo-Nazis in a statement from the White House Monday afternoon.

"Racism is evil -- and those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans," Trump said in response to the attacks in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend.

"Those who spread violence in the name of bigotry strike at the very core of America," Trump said.

The violent protests left one woman dead who was allegedly hit by a car driven by a man with ties to white supremacy groups.

Trump's comments came as he took a short break from his 17-day long working vacation in New York and New Jersey with a trip to the White House. He initially returned to Washington to meet with top administration officials and sign a presidential memorandum directing his US Trade Representative to determine whether an investigation is needed into China's laws and policies related to trade and intellectual property.

An unnamed White House official said Sunday that "of course" the President condemns "white supremacists, KKK, neo-nazi and all extremist groups," but declined to explain why the President wasn't saying it himself.</s>White Nationalist and supremacist leader Richard Spencer addresses supporters as self proclaimed "White Nationalists" and "Alt-Right" activists gather for what they called a "Freedom of Speech" rally at the Lincoln Memorial Jim Bourg/Reuters Alt-right leader Richard Spencer told reporters from his "office" on Monday that he doesn't think President Donald Trump condemned his movement on Monday when he denounced neo-Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan, and white supremacists.

"His statement today was more kumbaya nonsense," said Spencer, who attended and was slated to speak at the white nationalist "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Saturday. "Only a dumb person would take those lines seriously."

Trump said on Monday that "racism is evil" and denounced "the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans."

Spencer, however, insisted that the president had not denounced white nationalists or the "alt-right" movement he founded several years ago.

"I don't think he condemned it, no," Spencer said. "Did he say 'white nationalist?' 'Racist' means an irrational hatred of people. I don't think he meant any of us.'"

Asked whether he considers Trump an ally, Spencer replied that while he didn't think of Trump as "alt-right," he considers the president to be "the first true authentic nationalist in my lifetime."

"Obviously the alt-right has come very far in the past two years in terms of public exposure," Spencer said. "Is Donald Trump one of the major causes of that? Of course. He never talked about this conservative garbage we've been hearing for years...he was a nationalist."

Spencer said that two of Trump's top advisers, former Breitbart CEO Steve Bannon and speechwriter Stephen Miller, were "connected to the alt-right" in a way that others in the White House are not. But he said Trump's remarks sounded like "a Sunday school statement" and promised that the alt-right would not just be "cheerleaders" for the president.

He also refused to condemn the alleged neo-Nazi who was arrested on Saturday on suspicion of running over a 32-year-old counter protester.

"There's a distinction that should be made between murder and manslaughter," Spencer said. He added that the suspect, James Alex Fields, "could have truly feared for his life." But he said violence is "counterproductive to the movement."

White nationalists and neo-Nazis celebrated Trump's initial remarks about the protests in Charlottesville on Saturday, in which he denounced violence "on all sides," rather than explicitly condemning white supremacism.

"We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence on many sides," Trump said at a press conference. "On many sides."

The founder of the Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi and white supremacist website that considers itself a part of the alt-right, celebratedthe fact that Trump "outright refused to disavow" the white nationalist rally and movement.

"People saying he cucked are shills and kikes," wrote the founder, Andrew Anglin. "He did the opposite of cuck. He refused to even mention anything to do with us. When reporters were screaming at him about White Nationalism he just walked out of the room."</s>PepsiCo chief executive Indra Nooyi has been targeted by a campaign calling for business leaders to disassociate themselves from President Donald Trump after he was harshly criticized for his response to the weekend's far-right protests in Virginia.

Nooyi is being pressured to quit Trump’s business advisory council by racial justice group Color of Change, Bloomberg reports.

Chief executives from Under Armour, Intel, and pharmaceutical company Merck have quit the council after Trump took two days to explicitly condemn the white supremacists that marched in Charlottesville on August 12.

But in a press conference yesterday, the president once again stated that "both sides" were to blame for the violence.

The bosses of General Motors, General Electric, and Boeing have indicated that they will remain on Trump’s council for now. Alongside Nooyi, Color of Change is targeting IBM chief executive Ginni Rometty and Campbell Soup’s chief executive Denise Morrison.

Nooyi tweeted on August 13 to express her "heartbreak" at the events, but activists have said this does not go far enough and are targeting her with the hashtag #QuitTheCouncil.

This story first appeared on campaignlive.co.uk.</s>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>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>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>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.
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.