(15 Aug 2017) On Tuesday, President Donald Trump defended demonstrators who were rallying to save a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville, Virginia.
He compared the rationale for removing the confederate leader's statue to the removal of statues of former presidents who were also slaveholders saying "you're changing history. You're changing culture."
Continuing his assessment that there is blame on "both sides" following the deadly violence last weekend in Charlottesville, Virginia, Trump said that the demonstrators were there to protest the taking down of what was to them "a very, very important statue."
Trump then compared the debate around removing the confederate leaders' statues, to George Washington, the U.S. first president.
Trump asked reporters, "So will George Washington now lose his status? Are we going to take down statues to George Washington?"
He then rhetorically asked whether statues of Thomas Jefferson, another former U.S. president, should be taken down since he was a slave owner.
In an impromptu press conference at Trump Tower, the president said there were "many people other than neo-Nazis and white Nationalists" attending the "Unite the Right" rally who were treated "unfairly" by the press.
A loosely connected mix of white nationalists, neo-Nazis and other far-right extremists with disjointed missions had assembled in Charlottesville for the largest gathering of its kind in a decade.
"Unite the Right" was the name given to the Virginia rally, which ended in bloodshed Saturday when a car plowed into a crowd of demonstrators, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer.
Heyer was demonstrating with a group of counter-protesters in Charlottesville.
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