Appearing to suggest that Donald Trump did not represent “the American people’s values” after the recent violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, Rex Tillerson said on Sunday “the president speaks for himself”.

The US secretary of state was responding to questions about Trump’s assertion that “many sides” were to blame when white supremacists and anti-racism protesters clashed in Virginia on 12 August.

One person died and many more were injured when a suspect who demonstrated with white nationalists at a so-called Unite the Right rally rammed his car into crowd of counter-protesters.



Days after an official White House statement attributed to Trump blamed the violence “on many sides”, Trump went further in a testy exchange with reporters.

“You had a group on one side that was bad and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent,” Trump said. Both sides included “very bad people”, the president added, saying those gathered for the far-right rally, ostensibly to protest the removal of a statue of Robert E Lee, included many “fine people”.

Asked if such remarks made it harder for him to represent America abroad, Tillerson said: “I don’t believe anyone doubts the American people’s values or the commitment of the American government or the government’s agencies to advancing those values and defending those values.”

“And the president’s values?” asked Chris Wallace, the Fox news anchor.

Tillerson replied: “The president speaks for himself.”



Asked if he was “separating” himself from the president, Tillerson said: “I’ve made my own comments as to our values as well in a speech I gave to the state department this past week.”

Tillerson is the latest member of Trump’s cabinet to refuse to defend his shifting reactions to Charlottesville.

Earlier this week, chief economic adviser Gary Cohn was quoted by the Financial Times as saying the White House “can and must do better” to condemn racist groups and should “do everything we can to heal the deep divisions that exist in our communities”. Cohn contemplated resigning, according to several reports.

This weekend, video of James Mattis telling troops abroad America had “problems” and had lost “the power of inspiration” prompted suggestions the secretary of defense may have been referring to controversy surrounding the president.

Dozens of Republicans joined the backlash to Trump’s response, which not only drew a moral equivalence between Ku Klux Klan sympathizers and neo-Nazis and those opposing them, critics said, but came too slowly after a horrific instance of violence.

This weekend, the former vice-president Joe Biden criticised Trump in an essay published in the Atlantic.

“Today we have an American president who has publicly proclaimed a moral equivalency between neo-Nazis and Klansmen and those who would oppose their venom and hate,” Biden wrote. “We have an American president who has emboldened white supremacists with messages of comfort and support.”

In a campaign-style rally in Phoenix, Arizona, on Tuesday, Trump defended his controversial remarks and blamed the media for misrepresenting what he said.

“Here’s what I said on Saturday,” he told the crowd, before reading parts of the initial White House statement. In his reading, he left out three key words he originally used to describe the violence: “on many sides”.