WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on President Trump and the Charlottesville, Virginia violence (all times EDT):
4:15 p.m.
President Donald Trump says the groups protesting against white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia, were “also very violent.”
Trump is calling those protesters the “alt-left.” He says there is “blame on both sides” after the deadly violence over the weekend.
After his initial statement on the Charlottesville violence, Trump was criticized for appearing to condemn both the white nationalists and those who were protesting them. He tried to clean up his remarks Monday.
Trump says some of the facts about the deadly violence in Charlottesville still aren’t known.
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12:15 p.m.
President Donald Trump is blasting the CEOs who resigned from his manufacturing jobs council in the wake of the violence stemming from a white supremacist rally this past weekend in Charlottesville, Virginia, that led to the death of one counter-protester.
The president says on Twitter, “For every CEO that drops out of the Manufacturing Council, I have many to take their place. Grandstanders should not have gone on. JOBS!”
Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, announced his resignation Tuesday, a day after a raft of departures by CEOs heading large U.S. corporations.
The heads of pharmaceutical giant Merck, the sports gear company Under Armour and the tech firm Intel decided to leave the advisory council. Trump initially criticized the violence on many sides, rather than singling out the white supremacists. The president on Monday later said condemned groups tied to racism.
Trump has not said if who will join his council as replacements.
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6:00 a.m.
The leaders of four minority House caucus groups have written a letter to President Donald Trump calling for the removal of White House staff aides Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller and Sebastian Gorka.
The heads of the black, Hispanic, Asian and progressive caucuses are calling in the letter for the firings of the Trump administration officials in the wake of a violent, racist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. The letter asserts their continuing presence in the White House is emboldening a resurgent white supremacist movement in America.
“Americans deserve to know that white nationalists, white supremacists, and neo-Nazis are not in a position to influence U.S. policy,” says the letter dated Monday. “In this time of tumult in our country, Americans deserve a leader that will bring us all together and denounce those who seek to tear us apart.”
By Errin Haines Whack
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3:35 a.m.
President Donald Trump is back in the New York skyscraper that bears his name as the furor over his reaction to race-fueled clashes in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend shows few signs of dying down.
Protesters on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue tried to spoil Trump’s homecoming Monday night with signs bearing messages like “stop the hate, stop the lies” and chanting “shame, shame, shame” and “not my president!”
After two days of public equivocation and internal White House debate, the president condemned white supremacist groups by name on Monday, declaring “racism is evil”.
In a hastily arranged statement at the White House, Trump branded members of the KKK, neo-Nazis and white supremacists who take part in violence as “criminals and thugs.”
The groups are “repugnant to everything that we hold dear as Americans,” he said.
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