Trump under fire as white supremacist violence hits headlines

CHARLOTTESVILLE — The city of Charlottesville was engulfed by violence over the weekend as white nationalists and counter-protesters clashed in one of the bloodiest fights to date over the removal of Confederate monuments across the South.

The unrest presented President Donald Trump with a domestic crisis, with many on both left and right, and even his fellow Republicans, criticising him for waiting too long to address it and then, when he did so, failing to explicitly condemn the white-supremacist marchers who ignited the melee.

White nationalists had planned a demonstration over the city’s decision to remove a statue of Confederate general Robert E Lee. But it exploded into racial taunting, shoving and brawling, prompting the governor to declare a state of emergency and the National Guard to join police in clearing the area. The skirmishes mostly resulted in cuts and bruises. But after the rally at a city park was dispersed, a car with Ohio licence plates ploughed into a crowd near a downtown mall, killing a 32-year-old woman. Some 34 others were injured; at least 19 in the crash, according to a spokeswoman for the University of Virginia Medical Center.

Colonel Martin Kumer, the superintendent of the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail, confirmed on that Ohio man James Alex Fields, 20, had been arrested and charged with second-degree murder, three counts of malicious wounding and failing to stop at the scene of a fatal crash.

Witnesses said the grey sports car accelerated into a crowd of counter-demonstrators, who were marching jubilantly near the mall after the white nationalists had left, and hurled at least two people into the air.

“It was probably the scariest thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” said Mr Robert Armengol, who was at the scene reporting for a podcast he hosts with students at the University of Virginia. “After that it was pandemonium. The car hit reverse and sped off, and everybody who was up the street in my direction started running.”

The rally was billed as “Unite the Right” and both organisers and critics expected one of the largest gatherings of white nationalists in recent times, attracting the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis. Such groups have felt emboldened since Mr Trump’s election.

On Saturday afternoon, the president — speaking at a veterans’ event at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey — addressed what he described as “the terrible events” unfolding in Charlottesville. He condemned the bloody protests but did not specifically criticise the white nationalist rally and its neo-Nazi slogans, blaming “hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides”.

“It’s been going on for a long time in our country. It’s not Donald Trump. It’s not Barack Obama,” said Mr Trump, adding that he had been in contact with Virginia officials. After calling for the “swift restoration of law and order”, he offered a plea for unity among Americans of “all races, creeds and colours”.

A federal probe will be conducted into the incident. Politicians — such as Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, and the House Speaker, Mr Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, a Republican — condemned the violence.

After Mr Trump was faulted by fellow Republicans for his apparent refusal to criticise far-right hate groups, Attorney-General Jeff Sessions said that “when such actions arise from racial bigotry and hatred, they betray our core values and cannot be tolerated”.

“Justice will prevail,” the top law enforcement official in the country added.

Mr Marco Rubio, a Republican senator who was Mr Trump’s rival for the presidential nomination, tweeted: “Very important for the nation to hear (Mr Trump) describe events in Charlottesville for what they are: A terror attack by #whitesupremacists.”

Mr Trump’s response apparently also was not enough for Senator Cory Gardner, who chairs the Republican Party’s Senate-election effort. “Mr President, we must call evil by its name,” he tweeted. “These were white supremacists and this was domestic terrorism.”

In an attempt to downplay the issue, the White House stated late last night that Mr Trump’s condemnation of violence and hate also includes white supremacists. AGENCIES