Donald Trump on Thursday lamented the removal of “beautiful statues and monuments” commemorating the Confederacy, saying that he was “sad” to see America’s history and culture “ripped apart” by efforts to take down the memorials.
Trump finds himself increasingly isolated after defending the white supremacists who led a march on Saturday to protest the removal of a statue of Confederate general Robert E Lee in Charlottesville, Virginia.
In a string of morning tweets, Trump signaled that he was standing by his assertion that “both sides” were to blame for the bloody clashes that erupted. Those claims drew widespread condemnation from lawmakers who accused the president of inflaming racial tensions and drawing a moral equivalence between activists protesting racism and bigotry and white supremacists who carried signs with swastikas and chanted racist and antisemitic slurs.
“Sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments,” Trump tweeted. “You can’t change history, but you can learn from it.”
Meanwhile, Republican senators sharpened their criticism of the president for his response to the racially-motivated protests, during which a white supremacist allegedly plowed a car into a crowd of protesters, killing Heather Heyers and injuring more than a dozen others.
“The president has not yet been able to demonstrate the stability nor some of the competence that he needs to be successful,” Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee told reporters on Thursday. Corker warned that “our nation is going to go through great peril” if Trump failed to demonstrate moral leadership.
Quick GuideWhat happened at the Charlottesville protests?
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What happened in Charlottesville on 12 August?
White nationalists gathered in Charlottesville, Virginia, to protest against a plan to remove a statue of Robert E Lee, the Confederacy’s top general in the American civil war.
Demonstrators chanted racist statements, carried antisemitic placards and held torches during the “Unite the Right” rally, which was organised by white nationalist Jason Kessler.
The march was met by anti-fascist demonstrators, and some skirmishes broke out before James Fields, 20, allegedly ploughed a car into a group of counter-demonstrators.
Civil rights activist Heather Heyer, 32, died and others were injured. Fields has been charged with murder.
Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, the Senate’s only black Republican, said Trump’s commentary “complicates this administration’s moral authority”.
Scott, an ally of the president, faulted Trump for drawing a moral equivalence between the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis and white supremacists and the anti-hate protesters.
“I think you are either missing four centuries of history in this nation or you are trying to make something what it’s not,” Scott said in an interview with the Post and Courier.
Vice-president Mike Pence, who has stood by Trump as most party leaders were distancing themselves from him, concluded a tour of Central and South America with a speech at the Panama Canal that praised Trump as a modern-day Teddy Roosevelt.
“Then, as now, we have a president who understands that ‘a nation is only living as long as it is striving’ – and just as president Theodore Roosevelt exhorted his fellow Americans to ‘dare to be great’, president Donald Trump has dared us to make America great again,” Pence said. The 26th president oversaw the construction of the Panama Canal in the early 20th century.
“And so I say to all of you: Under President Trump, the United States of America will break new ground and break new records – we will recapture the spirit and rekindle the vision of our forebears – and in partnership with the free nations and peoples all across this hemisphere, we will awe the world once more with what we accomplish together.”
Trump denied on Twitter that he drew parallels between white supremacists and anti-hate protesters and claimed his message had been distorted by the media.
Two days after the bloody protests in Charlottesville, and under pressure from advisers after condemning violence from “many sides”, Trump on Monday delivered scripted remarks in which he directly condemned the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis and declared: “Racism is evil”. But the next day, he reverted to his initial position that “both sides” were at fault.
He returned to the topic on Thursday morning, criticizing efforts to remove the statues and memorials to the Confederate leaders. He argued that removing statues of Confederate leaders like Lee and Stonewall Jackson is “foolish” and would inevitably lead to calls for the removal of monuments of the US founding fathers, like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.
“You can’t change history, but you can learn from it,” he tweeted. “Robert E Lee. Stonewall Jackson – who’s next, Washington, Jefferson? So foolish. ...”
“Also the beauty that is being taken out of our cities, towns and parks will be greatly missed and never able to be comparably replaced!”
While all four men were slaveholders, neither Washington, the nation’s first president, nor Jefferson, the third president, rebelled against the US in an attempt to protect the institution of slavery from federal interference.
Calls to remove the confederate statues on display in cities, states and even the US Capitol have escalated in the days since Charlottesville. This week, Baltimore quietly removed four statues overnight, while mayors from Florida to Kentucky have called for their monuments to be taken down.
On Thursday, House minority leader Nancy Pelosi called for the removal of the Confederate statues from the US Capitol and urged Republicans to join Democrats in signing legislation that would see the memorials moved.
“The halls of Congress are the very heart of our democracy. The statues in the Capitol should embody our highest ideals as Americans, expressing who we are and who we aspire to be as a nation,” Pelosi said in a statement on Thursday.
She added: “There is no room for celebrating the violent bigotry of the men of the Confederacy in the hallowed halls of the United States Capitol or in places of honor across the country.”
Efforts to remove Confederate monuments have continued for decades, but were given renewed energy in June 2015 after the killing of nine African Americans in a church in Charleston, South Carolina. Some of the white supremacists in Charlottesville claimed they were demonstrating in protest at the push to remove the city’s statue of Lee.
In his first daybreak tweet, Trump attacked the Republican senator Lindsey Graham as a “publicity-seeking” lawmaker and attacked him for saying “falsely” that Trump had said there was “moral equivalency” between the hate groups and anti-fascists.
Graham was one of a group of Republicans who criticised the president for his apportioning of blame on “many sides” over the violence in Charlottesville.
Graham, of South Carolina, had said on Wednesday that Trump’s rhetoric was “dividing America”.
But on Thursday, Trump tweeted: “Publicity seeking Lindsey Graham falsely stated that I said there is moral equivalency between the KKK, neo-Nazis & white supremacists … and people like Ms Heyer. Such a disgusting lie. He just can’t forget his election trouncing. The people of South Carolina will remember!”
Graham responded by urging the president to lead the nation “toward the light – not back to the darkness”.
Graham said: “Because of the manner in which you have handled the Charlottesville tragedy you are now receiving praise from some of the most racist and hate-filled individuals and groups in our country. For the sake of our nation – as our president – please fix this. History is watching us all”.
Late Wednesday, Heather Heyer’s mother, Susan Bro, gave an emotional and defiant tribute to her daughter in front of 1,200 mourners at a memorial service.
Heyer, who worked as paralegal at local law firm, was allegedly killed by the white nationalist James Fields. The 20-year-old is accused of ramming his Dodge Challenger into a crowd of anti-hate protesters on Saturday afternoon, sending bodies flying into the air and wounding 19 other people.
“They tried to kill my child to shut her up. But guess what? You just magnified her,” Bro said.