NEW YORK — President Trump said Tuesday he has not reached out to the family of the woman killed in this weekend’s violence in Charlottesville, Va., but stressed that he will.
“No. I will be reaching out,” Trump said when asked by The Hill.
Heather Heyer, 32, was killed when a car drove into a crowd of counterprotesters at a white supremacist rally in the Virginia college town.
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Trump praised Heyer’s mother, Susan Bro, for thanking him for his “words of comfort” when he condemned the groups behind the rally during a statement on Monday.
“I thought that the statement put out, the mother’s statement I thought was a beautiful statement,” he said. “I’ll tell you — it was something that I really appreciated. I thought it was terrific.”
But Trump undercut his Monday comments during a wild, impromptu press conference at his Manhattan high rise, when he claimed there is “blame on both sides” for the deadly violence in Charlottesville.
His latest remarks echoed his widely panned Saturday statement, in which he said there was violence “on many sides.”
Police say the alleged driver, a 20-year-old Ohio man, has ties to white supremacist groups.
Trump called the driver a “disgrace” but declined to say unequivocally whether he committed an act of terrorism.
“The driver of the car is a murderer and what he did was a horrible, horrible, inexcusable thing,” he said.