Former GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Friday unleashed a scathing attack on President Trump for his much-maligned response to the deadly violence sparked by a white nationalist protest in Virginia.

“He should address the American people, acknowledge that he was wrong, apologize,” Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, wrote on Facebook.

“State forcefully and unequivocally that racists are 100% to blame for the murder and violence in Charlottesville.”

Trump’s words, Romney, added, “caused racists to rejoice, minorities to weep, and the vast heart of America to mourn.”

He also called on the president to renounce his statements that implied a moral equivalence between the torch-carrying, anti-Semitic white nationalists and what Trump called “the alt-left” protesters.

“Testify that there is no conceivable comparison or moral equivalency between the Nazis — who brutally murdered millions of Jews and who hundreds of thousands of Americans gave their lives to defeat — and the counter-protestors who were outraged to see fools parading the Nazi flag, Nazi armband and Nazi salute,” Romney said.

He concluded by chiding the president for setting a lousy example for American kids.

“This is a defining moment for President Trump. But much more than that, it is a moment that will define America in the hearts of our children. They are watching, our soldiers are watching, the world is watching. Mr. President, act now for the good of the country,” Romney wrote.

It was among the most forceful statements yet from a respected GOP figure about Trump’s reaction to the violence.

And it came the same day that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, without mentioning his boss by name, condemned racism and hate speech of the kind voiced at the supremacists’ rally.

In his most extensive comments since last weekend’s violence, Tillerson called racism “evil.”

He said freedom of speech is sacrosanct but that those who promote hate poison the public discourse and damage the country they claim to love.

Speaking to interns and young minority staffers at the State Department, Tillerson pledged to diversify the overwhelmingly white ranks of the senior diplomatic corps.

He also sought to calm fears he might eliminate programs designed to recruit minorities, saying an earlier suspension of the programs was only temporary.

A growing number of Republican elected officials have rebuked Trump for his comments, but the president has remained defiant, calling the movement to topple statues of Confederate military men “foolish.”

Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee even questioned the president’s “stability” on Thursday.

“The president has not yet been able to demonstrate the stability nor some of the competence that he needs to demonstrate in order to be successful,” Corker said.

“He has not demonstrated that he understands what has made this nation great and what it is today, and he’s got to demonstrate the characteristics of a president who understands that,” he added.