Mayor Tom Barrett issued a
forceful denunciation of President Trump’s attempts to assign equal blame for the bloodshed in Charlottesville, Virginia on Saturday August 12 to protestors who came out in support of the city council’s decision to remove a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee with racist hate groups and other organizations designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center as domestic terrorist organizations.
In a press conference on August 16, a day after he first learned of the tragedy in which 19 people were injured and a 32-year-old woman killed when a 20-year old male infatuated with Nazism allegedly drove a car at high speed into a crow of protestors supporting removal of the statue.
Mayor Barrett condemned President Trump for failing to clearly condemn the far right extremists and speak up unequivocally in defense of the Constitutional rights of all Americans in the days since the tragedy.
“His remarks have intentionally and purposefully denigrated the lives of many citizens and given a green light to run over the rights of minorities, he said. We know our history have not been perfect, he said. Mayor Barrett went on to state that virtually every political leader since American Independence has recognized that America’s greatest strength is its diversity and that all politicians
needed of every political party needed to come together and provide the moral leadership, which appears to be so lacking in the President.