A growing number of Republican lawmakers are distancing themselves from Donald Trump after the president reasserted that “both sides” were responsible for the violent clashes in Charlottesville.
Mr Trump has drawn fierce criticism for claiming that there were “very fine people” among the white nationalist demonstrators who protested against the removal of a confederate statue over the weekend. Footage of the event showed demonstrators carrying torches and chanting slogans, including “blood and soil” and “Jews will not replace us”.
On Wednesday, Senate Republican majority leader Mitch McConnell commented on Mr Trump’s latest remarks for the first time, 12 hours after the president spoke. While Mr McConnell did not mention the president by name, he appeared to distance himself from Mr Trump’s remarks. “There are no good neo-Nazis, and those who espouse their views are not supporters of American ideals and freedoms,” he said in a statement.
He condemned “the white supremacist, KKK, and neo-Nazi groups who brought hatred and violence to Charlottesville” and were now planning a rally in his home state of Kentucky. “The messages of hate and bigotry are not welcome in Kentucky and should not be welcome anywhere in America.”
As Republican lawmakers continued to voice criticism of the president on Wednesday, vice-president Mike Pence — one of the White House’s main conduits to Capitol Hill — announced he would be cutting short his trip to South America and returning to the US.
Mr Pence’s chief-of-staff said the vice-president had already been discussing cutting the trip short, in order to attend a meeting in Camp David, but that a final decision had been made on Tuesday.
By Wednesday, a growing number of Republican lawmakers had criticised the president’s remarks, with many calling Mr Trump out directly.
“[The president] must stop the moral equivalency! AGAIN, white supremacists were to blame for the violence in #Charlottesville,” tweeted Charlie Dent, a Republican House member from Pennsylvania.
“Mr President, you can’t allow [white supremacists] to share only part of blame . . . We cannot allow this old evil to be resurrected,” Marco Rubio, the Republican senator from Florida, said.
“Through his statements yesterday, President Trump took a step backward by again suggesting there is moral equivalency between the white supremacist neo-Nazis and KKK members who attended the Charlottesville rally and people like Ms Heyer,” senator Lindsey Graham said, referring to Heather Heyer, a counter-protester who died after being run over by a car. “I, along with many others, do not endorse this moral equivalency.”
John Kasich, the Republican governor of Ohio, called Mr Trump’s remarks “pathetic”.
Inside Mr Trump’s circle, some said that they had not expected the president to reverse course after earlier condemning white nationalists.
The president’s newly installed chief of staff John Kelly was caught on camera looking visibly pained during Mr Trump’s combative press conference on Tuesday.
However, by Wednesday morning, no one inside the administration had publicly criticised the president’s comments or suggested they were considering resigning from the White House.
Two of Mr Trump’s top aides — his daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner — who are thought to serve as tempering influences on the president, and are themselves practising Orthodox Jews, were silent. They are on vacation in Vermont.
A YouGov poll released Wednesday found that 31 per cent of Americans believe the president personally supports white nationalism versus 22 per cent of Americans who believe he opposes it. According to the poll, 48 per cent of Americans believe Mr Trump did not do enough to condemn the nationalist violence in Charlottesville versus 30 per cent who believe he did.
David Winston, a Republican pollster, said it was still unclear whether Republican lawmakers would be able to move past Mr Trump’s recent comments in order to push forward the party’s legislative agenda.
“Clearly you’ve seen some significant dissatisfaction from congressional Republicans to the comment that he made. They have been very clear statements of dissatisfaction,” he said.
“You’ve got the next big policy item that’s about to come here is tax reform. If you’re going to get tax reform, there’s only one way to do that — and that’s through the Congress. The White House needs to have a very solid working relationship with Congress if they’re going to get that through.”
Surrogates for Mr Trump have been fighting back, arguing that the president had clearly criticised hate groups in all three of his public statements on Charlottesville and blaming the continuing outcry on the media.
“As the son of a holocaust survivor, I have no tolerance for #racism. Just because I support [the president] doesn’t make me a racist,” Michael Cohen, Mr Trump’s longtime lawyer, wrote on Twitter, posting a montage of different of photos of himself and different African-Americans — a decision which provoked even more criticism.
Outside Mr Trump’s orbit, meanwhile, the president’s comments continued to generate strong responses.
“America must always reject racial bigotry, anti-Semitism, and hatred in all forms,” former presidents George W Bush and George H W Bush wrote in a joint-statement. “As we pray for Charlottesville, we are reminded of the fundamental truths recorded by that city’s most prominent citizen in the Declaration of Independence: we are all created equal and endowed by our creator with unalienable rights.”
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