Donald Trump shocked observers with an off-the-rails press conference on Bengali ArchivesTuesday in which he defended some of the people who took part in the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
A planned discussion about infrastructure quickly deteriorated when President Trump took questions from the media in the lobby of Trump Tower in New York.
SEE ALSO: Trump blames 'many sides' for violence in CharlottesvilleImmediately the white supremacist rally and deadly car ramming in Charlottesville over the weekend were brought up and Trump got in over his head justifying his delayed response to the racist demonstration.
He said the timing of his statements about the violence "was excellent," despite criticism that it took him until Monday to outright condemn the racist, violent groups and domestic terrorism that left a 32-year-old woman dead.
Another head-spinning moment at the press event came when Trump said the mother of the woman killed at the rally, Heather Heyer, wrote "the nicest things" and "thanked me for what I said."
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After a testy exchange with the press and multiple interjections from Trump trying to quiet reporters who were yelling out questions, the president started to compare taking down statues of confederate general Robert E. Lee to George Washington.
He said this week it's Robert E. Lee that people are protesting, but next week it could be George Washington statues because the first president was a slaveowner. "Where does it stop?" he asked.
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Trump also seemingly defended white supremacist protesters and suggested some of the blame fell on the "alt-left" for protest violence. The term "alt-left" is largely a right-wing construct that doesn't add up when comparing Nazis to social advocacy groups.
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He also implied that there were people at the racist protest who were treated "unfairly" and reiterated his point that participants of the main rally and counter-protest both were to blame for violence.
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After the unhinged press conference, former KKK leader David Duke thanked Trump for what he said about Charlottesville and the so-called "leftist terrorists."
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All this doesn’t even include Trump's disparaging remarks about his “friend” and White House chief strategist Steve Bannon. "We'll see what happens," he said in a weak vote of confidence for Bannon's future in the administration.
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Totally unreal.
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