With the wounds of last week's racially-charged violence in Charlottesville, Va., still raw, President Trump on Wednesday doubled-down in his defense of keeping monuments to the Confederacy in public spaces.

Trump said Thursday it is "sad" that there is a movement to remove the monuments, which honor southern soldiers and generals who fought to defend slavery. "So foolish!" the president said in a series of tweets.

The president's statements drew ire from U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, who on Thursday criticized Trump for being too engrossed with justifying memorials to the Confederacy to work on infrastructure and economic policies.

"The president is too busy defending 20th century shrines to white supremacy to focus on fixing roads or creating jobs," tweeted Wyden, who is Jewish and whose family escaped Nazi Germany in the 1930s.

"Ridiculous that Trump chose to abandon effort to promote American jobs to focus on defending monuments glorifying slavery and treason," Wyden tweeted, likely referencing Trump's decision to disband two business advisory councils Wednesday.

Droves of corporate leaders quit the advisory panels -- the Strategy & Policy Forum and the Manufacturing Council -- after Trump seemed to equate neo-Nazi and Ku Klux Klan demonstrators who descended on Charlottesville to defend a Confederate statue with the protestors who opposed them.

Intel chief executive Brian Krzanich was among the business leaders that left the councils among the uproar over Trump's comments.

Despite divisions over how to handle displays of Confederate monuments, municipalities that maintain them continue to face pressure to tear them down or move them to museums.

In Baltimore, four statues were removed in the dead of night this week, and a statue was toppled in North Carolina.

Thousands of Seattle petitioners have also called for Mayor Ed Murray to remove a Confederate memorial in an area cemetery. Oregon has no publicly-sponsored Confederate symbols.

-- Gordon R. Friedman

503-221-8209; @GordonRFriedman