A defiant President Donald Trump on Thursday further inflamed cultural and racial tensions, lamenting that "beautiful" Confederate statues are being removed and later urging Americans to research a dubious historic story about Muslims in the wake of a terror attack.

He also aggravated the GOP divide that has reemerged following his racially charged statements about the Charlottesville violence, attacking Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham and Jeff Flake for panning his response to the protests that left one Virginia woman dead.


In a brief break from his controversial statements, Trump struck a presidential tone in the hours after a deadly attack in Barcelona left at least a dozen people dead and more than 80 others injured after a van rammed through pedestrians.

“The United States condemns the terror attack in Barcelona, Spain, and will do whatever is necessary to help,” Trump tweeted Thursday afternoon. “Be tough & strong, we love you!”

But Trump then overshadowed his original message, pushing a story he had also brought up during the campaign about Army Gen. John Pershing shooting Muslims in the early 1900s with bullets dipped in pigs’ blood.

“Study what General Pershing of the United States did to terrorists when caught,” Trump urged on Twitter on Thursday. “There was no more Radical Islamic Terror for 35 years!”

Historians have found little evidence to support the story. But it was a familiar playbook for Trump, who allowed his impulses earlier this week to stomp over the presidential message he delivered Monday in response to a similar tragedy that struck the U.S. last week.

Republican lawmakers, CEOs and military leaders have raced to distance themselves from the president since he doubled down on his claim that “both sides” are to blame for the violent clashes in Charlottesville over a white supremacist protest.

But the president has shown no signs of backing down.

“Sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments,” Trump wrote Thursday morning. “You can’t change history, but you can learn from it. Robert E Lee, Stonewall Jackson – who’s next, Washington, Jefferson? So foolish!”

“Also the beauty that is being taken out of our cities, towns and parks will be greatly missed and never able to be comparably replaced!” added Trump, who appeared to be sympathizing with some of the white supremacists and neo-Nazis who rallied to protest the removal of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s statue.

Trump also went on the attack against Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who had accused Trump of taking “a step backward by again suggesting there is moral equivalency between the white supremacist neo-Nazis and KKK members who attended the Charlottesville rally.”

The president responded with anger, tweeting on Thursday morning that the “publicity seeking” lawmaker’s statement was false. “Such a disgusting lie,” Trump said. “He just can’t forget his election trouncing.”

Trump went after Sen. Jeff Flake as well. The Arizona Republican had warned on Wednesday that the GOP “can’t claim to be the party of Lincoln if we equivocate in condemning white supremacy.”

“Great to see that Dr. Kelli Ward is running against Flake Jeff Flake, who is WEAK on borders, crime and a non-factor in Senate,” Trump said, seemingly endorsing the GOP primary challenger over the vulnerable incumbent senator. “He's toxic!”

Taken together, the chaos of the week represents another low for Trump’s presidency, especially as he tries to revive efforts to repeal Obamacare, pass tax reform and push an infrastructure package, while also finding a congressional compromise that can avert a government shutdown and government default this fall. Trump can ill afford to lose the support of fellow Republicans, with the slim majority the party holds in the Senate.

And it’s not just lawmakers who are shunning Trump and his rhetoric. A steady flow of business leaders have also severed ties with the White House, prompting Trump to disband two advisory councils to stem the tide of defections. Even military leaders on the Joint Chiefs of Staff have taken stands, unequivocally stating that racism and hatred won’t be tolerated within the armed forces.

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“I can absolutely and unambiguously tell you there is no place — no place — for racism and bigotry in the U.S. military or in the United States as a whole,” Marine Corps Gen. Joe Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Thursday from Beijing.

Trump is also facing heightened turmoil in his White House, a dynamic that chief strategist Steve Bannon further aggravated by giving multiple interviews in which he broke from the president on North Korea, attacked his West Wing colleagues — including economic adviser Gary Cohn — and threatened to overhaul the Defense and State departments.

He took a dig at Trump officials who are shying away from an aggressive trade policy, saying “they are wetting themselves.”

“That’s a fight I fight every day here,” Bannon said. “We’re still fighting. There’s Treasury and Gary Cohn and Goldman Sachs lobbying.”

The embattled White House aide also amplified Trump’s culture wars message, saying the president’s “where does it all end” skepticism “connects with the American people about their history, cultures and traditions.”

“The race-identity politics of the left wants to say it’s all racist. Just give me more,” Bannon told The New York Times. “Tear down more statues. Say the revolution is coming. I can’t get enough of it.”

But descendants of Confederate Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson have called for the removal of his statue and others who represent the Confederacy.

“They are overt symbols of racism and white supremacy, and the time is long overdue for them to depart from public display,” Jackson’s great-great-grandsons William Jackson Christian and Warren Edmund Christian wrote in an open letter to the mayor of Richmond, Virginia.

Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at Rice University, said on Thursday that Trump has joined Andrew Johnson and Woodrow Wilson “as the most virulently racist” presidents of the post-Civil War.

“Donald Trump seems to want to incite a cultural war,” Brinkley said, adding that the president is “willing to be incendiary on racial issues for political gain.”

But he questioned the upside of defending Confederate monuments, noting that the Midwestern states that ultimately carried Trump to victory — Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania — all fought on the side of the Union.

A CBS News poll released Thursday morning shows that 55 percent of Americans disapprove of Trump’s response to Charlottesville, though more than two-thirds of Republicans surveyed do approve. The poll was conducted Monday, when Trump declared racism “evil” and condemned hate groups by name, through Wednesday, a day after the president doubled down on his initial response that white supremacists weren’t the only people responsible for violence.

Trump, however, eyed a different data point. “Many meetings today in Bedminster including with Secretary Linda M and Small Business,” he tweeted, after attacking Republican senators but before tweeting about the Confederate monuments being taken down across the country and the attack in Barcelona. “Job numbers are looking great!”

Matthew Nussbaum and Louis Nelson contributed to this report.