President Trump delivers a statement from Trump Tower after signing an executive order on the environmental review and permitting process for infrastructure projects.
Trump Defends Initial Remarks on Charlottesville; Again Blames ‘Both Sides’
Even members of Mr. Trump’s own military appeared to take quick offense to their commander’s words. The Marine Corps commandant, General Robert B. Neller, said hours after the president spoke that racial hatred and extremism had no place in the Marines, citing its code of courage, honor and commitment.
He did not name Mr. Trump, but in a tweet wrote that there is “no place for racial hatred or extremism in @USMC. Our core values of Honor, Courage, and Commitment frame the way Marines live and act.”
.. What he did was a horrible, horrible, inexcusable thing.”
But he refused to explicitly say that the killing of the young woman was a case of domestic terrorism, saying only that “you get into legal semantics.”
.. The president’s raw and emotional eruption during a news conference about infrastructure was a near-complete rejection of the more measured language about the unrest that Mr. Trump offered in his brief statement on Monday from the White House.
.. Again and again, Mr. Trump said that the portrayal of nationalist protesters in the city were not all neo-Nazis or white supremacists, and he said it was unfair to suggest that they were.
.. He said it should be “up to a local town, community” to say whether the statue of Robert E. Lee should remain in place.