House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) said in a statement Monday that he was “struck by the tone Heather Heyer’s parents took at her memorial service,” saying their call for “healing and forgiveness” was a powerful example.

“Here they are suddenly grieving and saying goodbye to their daughter, taken by an act of domestic terrorism,” Ryan said in a statement posted on Facebook Monday, more than a week after Heyer’s death and five days after her memorial service. “And instead of turning to anger, they call for healing and forgiveness. They set a powerful example.”

Heyer was killed in Charlottesville two weekends ago, where she was counter-protesting a group of white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and KKK members who gathered for a rally. Heyer was killed and many more were injured when a man drove his car into the group the 32-year-old was protesting with.

And while Ryan’s sentiment about healing and forgiveness is touching, the statement completely misrepresents what Heyer’s mother, Susan Bro, said last week at Heyer’s memorial service.

In her eulogy for her daughter, Bro said explicitly that it was “not all about forgiveness.”

“We’re not going to sit around and shake hands and go ‘Kumbaya,’ and I’m sorry, it’s not all about forgiveness,” Bro said. “I know that’s not a popular trend. But the truth is, we are going to have our differences. We are going to be angry with each other. But let’s channel that anger not into hate, not into violence, not into fear, but let’s channel that difference, that anger into righteous action.”


Ryan, in his statement, also tries to insulate his comments about Charlottesville and Heyer’s death from his legislative agenda.

“If America stands for anything, it is the idea that the condition of your birth doesn’t affect the outcome of your life,” Ryan said. “The notion that anyone is intrinsically superior to anyone else runs completely counter to our founding principles.”

But in his time in Congress and as House Speaker, Ryan has promoted significant cuts to Medicaid, a move that would disproportionately affect people of color and significant tax cuts for the wealthy, which would disproportionately benefit white people.

The statement also avoids mentioning President Trump at all, despite obvious references to the president’s comments last week, when he said there was violence on “many sides” and some “very fine people” marched in the Unite the Right rally.

“That is why we all need to make clear there is no moral relativism when it comes to neo-Nazis,” Ryan said. “We cannot allow the slightest ambiguity on such a fundamental question.”


Ryan also writes that there were “immediate condemnations from left, right, and center” following the Unite the Right rally and Heyer’s killing.

“I felt the range of emotions that so many of us did. Anger, bewilderment, sadness. As I said then, the views that fueled this spectacle are repugnant. My hope was that the nation would unite in opposition to this bigotry,” the statement said. “The immediate condemnations from left, right, and center affirmed that there is no confusion about right and wrong here.”

But Trump himself waited two days to condemn white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and KKK members, and he quickly re-opened the door with his comments last Tuesday.

Less than 30 of the 292 Republican members of Congress have called out Trump by name or title since the now-infamous press conference.