Charlottesville

Charlottesville mayor: Trump's response to the violence has left him 'on the sidelines'

By LOUIS NELSON

President Donald Trump’s comments on the violent clashes on Saturday in Charlottesville, Virginia, between white supremacist groups and counter-protesters has left him “on the sidelines” at a crucial moment for the nation, Charlottesville Mayor Michael Signer said Monday morning.

A “unite the right” rally of White Supremacists last Saturday to protest the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville drew scores of counter-protesters and clashes between the groups turned deadly when a man allegedly drove his car into a group of those opposing the white supremacists, killing one and injuring 19 others.

In remarks from his Bedminster, New Jersey, club, where he is taking a working vacation for much of August, Trump did not specifically condemn the white supremacists but instead rejected “this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides." The remarks were panned as inadequate by many, including some Republican lawmakers, and other Trump administration officials offered much stronger denunciations of the hate groups whose presence in Charlottesville sparked violence.

“The president, you know, I’d feel fine if I don't talk about him very much. He's been on the sidelines for so much in this country, for [what] working people need and for what a country that really needs to progress and heal and tell the truth about a lot of chapters in our history has been about,” Signer said Monday morning on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “I think the nation is speaking with one voice on that.”

While Signer said Monday that he was hesitant to discuss the president, he has been clear in the days since the attack that the seeds of the violence in his city over the weekend can at least be partially traced back to Trump, whose campaign rhetoric at times seemed a wink to far-right hate groups.

Among other instances, the president famously did not immediately reject the endorsement of former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, although he later did so. And last summer, Trump’s Twitter account featured an image of Democrat Hillary Clinton over a background of hundred dollar bills. To her right was a six-pointed star, assumed by many to be a Jewish Star of David, with the words “most corrupt candidate ever” written inside. Trump’s campaign said the star was intended to be a sheriff’s badge, although the meme had previously appeared on a white supremacist message board.

“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 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,” he added. “That, I think, just came to an end.”