NEW YORK (AP) – President Donald Trump is defending his response to Saturday’s racially-charged protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, but his combative exchange with reporters Tuesday at times mischaracterized the message and purpose of event.
Trump says the rally largely concerned the removal of a monument to Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, although the rally was billed as pushback against the “anti-white climate.”
The organizer of the rally has said he initially was spurred because of Charlottesville’s decision to remove the statue. But he has also said the event, dubbed “Unite the Right,” came to represent much more than that.
Those in the crowd included Ku Klux Klan members, skinheads and members of various white nationalist factions.