President Trump slammed the KKK and neo-Nazis as repugnant

US President Donald Trump, under pressure to explicitly condemn a weekend rally by white supremacists that ended in bloodshed, yesterday denounced racism and slammed the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis as “repugnant”.”
Trump had taken heat from Democrats ad Republicans alike for his response to Saturday’s violence in Charlottesville, Virginia.
A woman was killed and 19 others injured when a suspected Nazi sympathiser ploughed his car into a crowd of anti-racism protesters after a violent rally by neo-Nazis and white supremacists over the removal of a Confederate statue.
After meeting with Attorney General Jeff Sessions and new FBI Director Christopher Wray, Trump got tough.
“Those who spread violence in the name of bigotry strike at the very core of America,” Trump said in nationally televised remarks from the White House, where he travelled early yesterday to meet with his top law enforcement aides.
“Racism is evil. And those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans,” he said.
“To anyone who acted criminally in this weekend’s racist violence, you will be held fully accountable. Justice will be delivered.”
In an appearance Saturday at his golf resort in New Jersey, Trump had faulted “many sides” for the violence but made no specific mention of the white extremists involved in the melee, some of whom wore Trump hats and T-shirts.
Earlier yesterday, Sessions said in an interview on ABC’s Good Morning America programme that the car attack “does meet the definition of domestic terrorism”.
“You can be sure we will charge and advance the investigation towards the most serious charges that can be brought because this is unequivocally an unacceptable, evil attack,” he told ABC.
The Justice Department has launched a civil rights inquiry in connection with the incident, and the driver, a 20-year-old Ohio man who was said to have had a history of neo-Nazi beliefs, has been charged with second-degree murder.
Yesterday, a judge denied bail for the suspected attacker, James Fields.
After a weekend of criticism of Trump from both sides of the political aisle, a prominent African-American businessman quit a presidential advisory body yesterday to protest what he deemed an insufficient response.
“Our country’s strength stems from its diversity and the contributions made by men and women of different faiths, races, sexual orientations and political beliefs,” Ken Frazier, chief executive of Merck Pharmaceutical, said in announcing his resignation from Trump’s American Manufacturing Council.
“America’s leaders must honor our fundamental values by clearly rejecting expressions of hatred, bigotry and group supremacy, which run counter to the American ideal that all people are created equal,” Frazier said.
“As CEO of Merck and as a matter of personal conscience, I feel a responsibility to take a stand against intolerance and extremism.”
Trump was quick to lash out at Frazier’s move.
“Now that Ken Frazier of Merck Pharma has resigned from President’s Manufacturing Council, he will have more time to LOWER RIPOFF DRUG PRICES!” the president said on Twitter.
On Sunday, the White House and top administration officials strove to defend the president.
“The president said very strongly in his statement yesterday that he condemns all forms of violence, bigotry and hatred,” the White House said in a statement.
“Of course that includes white supremacists, KKK, neo-Nazi and all extremist groups.”
On a visit to Colombia, Vice President Mike Pence said: “These dangerous fringe groups have no place in American public life and in the American debate, and we condemn them in the strongest possible terms.”
Pence also defended Trump, saying the president “clearly and unambiguously condemned the bigotry, violence and hatred” on display in Charlottesville.
Of the 19 people injured on Saturday, 10 remained hospitalised in good condition and nine had been released, the University of Virginia Health System said.
Two state police officers involved in the law enforcement deployment for the rally also died Saturday in a helicopter crash.
Trump faced criticism during last year’s presidential campaign for failing to quickly reject a vow of support from a former Ku Klux Klan leader, David Duke, though he eventually did so. Duke attended Saturday’s rally.
The suspected white supremacist who allegedly rammed his car into a crowd of protesters was described Monday as a quiet man who has held radical views for years. He is accused of killing a 32-year-old woman Saturday when he ploughed his Dodge Challenger into a crowd of counter-protesters.
An image of Fields emerged as an introverted young man who held white supremacist views and admired Nazi ideology, but who failed as a soldier.
A photo of Fields captured at the Saturday rally showed him carrying symbols attributed to a racist right-wing organisation, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Fields’s views were known to Derek Weimer, his former teacher at Randall K Cooper High School in Kentucky, where he said other teachers were also concerned about the student’s “very radical beliefs”.
He was interested in military tactics, especially of the German military of World War II, Weimer said.
“He was very big into Nazism. He really had a fondness for Adolf Hitler,” he told CNN.
“He went to a good school. Lived in a good neighbourhood. There were plenty of people around to try to guide him in the right direction. My first feeling is we failed. I failed,” Weimer said in a separate interview with Ohio public radio station WVXU.
Fields enlisted in the US Army in August 2015 soon after graduating, but was released four months later “due to a failure to meeting training standards”, the service said in a statement.
Fields and his mother Samantha Bloom had moved from Kentucky to nearby Ohio in recent months, according to US media reports.
The web hosting company GoDaddy said on Sunday it had given The Daily Stormer 24 hours to move its domain to another provider after the extremist web site posted an article denigrating the woman who was killed at a white nationalist rally in Virginia.
“We informed The Daily Stormer that they have 24 hours to move the domain to another provider, as they have violated our terms of service,” GoDaddy Inc said on its official Twitter page.
The Daily Stormer is a neo-Nazi, white supremacist website associated with the alt-right movement, which was spear-heading the rally on Saturday in Charlottesville, Virginia which resulted in violence, including the death of Heather Heyer, who was fatally struck by a car allegedly driven by a man with white nationalist views.
The hosting company’s rules of conduct ban using its services in a manner that “promotes, encourages or engages in terrorism, violence against people, animals or property”. Company representatives could not immediately be reached for comment.
The post on Heyer denigrated her physical appearance and what it said were anti-white male views.
On Monday, a note appeared on the Daily Stormer’s home page, which claimed that the site had been taken over by Anonymous, a loose-knit collective of hacker activists that intended to permanently take it offline in 24 hours.