WASHINGTON — Speaker Paul D. Ryan condemned President Trump’s blaming of “both sides” for last week’s violence in Charlottesville, Va., but argued during a town hall on Monday night that the president had since repaired the damage he had done.

“It was not only morally ambiguous, it was equivocating,” Mr. Ryan, appearing at a CNN forum from his congressional district in Wisconsin, said of the president’s remarks at a news conference last week, one of several instances in which he stoked tensions over the violence. “And that was wrong. That’s why I think it was very, very important that he has since then cleared that up. I think it was important that he did that tonight.”

Mr. Trump indirectly addressed the violence in Charlottesville on Monday night at the start of his address laying out his new strategy to jump-start the faltering campaign against the Taliban and the Islamic State in Afghanistan.

“Let us make a simple promise to the men and women we ask to fight in our name, that when they return home from battle, they will find a country that has renewed the sacred bonds of love and loyalty that unite us together as one,” the president said.