Donald Trump appeared at New York City’s Trump Tower on Tuesday ready to talk to reporters about the country’s infrastructure, flanked on both sides by Mick Mulvaney, the director of the Office of Management and Budget; Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin; and Labor Secretary Elaine Chao. After starting off by bemoaning the state of America’s roads and bridges (“We’re like a third-world country,” he said), he opened up the floor to reporters who were eager to question the president on a far more pressing issue: the continued fallout from a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend, in which an anti-racist protester was killed. Trump—who reportedly overruled his staff by taking questions in the first place—appeared to become increasingly agitated as he fielded nearly a dozen questions about his hesitant, equivocal response to the crisis.

The result was a disturbing scene in which Trump defended the mob of torch-bearing white nationalists who gathered Friday night to protest the removal of a Confederate statue; abdicated any responsibility for healing a racial divide that he said preceded his presidency; said there were “very fine people” on both sides of the rally; and admonished left-wing agitators for creating the deadly violence that roiled Charlottesville the following day.

On waiting to condemn the act of terror committed by a white nationalist in Charlottesville until Monday:

“I didn’t wait long. I wanted to make sure, unlike most politicians, that what I said was correct. The statement I made on Saturday was a fine statement. It takes a little while to get the facts. You still don’t know the facts. When I make a statement, I like to be correct.”

On Heather Heyer, the woman who died when she was struck and killed by a car plowing through a group of counterprotesters:

“Her mother wrote me and said, through I guess social media, the nicest things, and I very much appreciate that. I hear she was an incredible young woman. Her mother on Twitter thanked me for what I said. If the press wasn’t fake, it would have thanked me for what I said. Unlike you and unlike the media, before I make a statement I like to know the facts. How about a couple of infrastructure questions?”

On the importance of hearing both sides: