Mother of Charlottesville victim Heather Heyer says she won't talk to Trump

Doug Stanglin | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Mother of Charlottesville victim: I'm not talking to Trump The mother of Heather Heyer, the young counter-protester killed in Charlottesville, Va., last weekend, told ABC's "Good Morning America" that she won't take any phone calls from President Trump.

The mother of Heather Heyer, the young counter-protester killed in Charlottesville, Va., last weekend, said Friday that she won't take any phone calls from President Trump because she believes he compared her daughter to white supremacists.

"I'm not talking to the President now," Susan Bro said Friday on ABC's "Good Morning America." "I'm sorry. After what he said about my child, and it's not that I saw somebody else's tweets about him. I saw an actual clip of him at a press conference equating the protesters like Ms. Heyer with the KKK and the white supremacists."

Heyer, 32, a legal assistant, was killed Saturday when a car driven at high speed slammed into a crowd of counter-protesters following a "Unite The Right" rally of white nationalists and neo-Nazis.

James Alex Fields, Jr., 20, of Maumee, Ohio, who had expressed support for neo-Nazi positions, was charged with second-degree murder in Heyer's death. Nineteen others were also injured in the melee.

"Have you talked to [Pres. Trump] directly yet?" - @RobinRoberts



"I have not and now I will not." - Susan Bro, mother of Heather Heyer pic.twitter.com/TlqplPyi3J — Good Morning America (@GMA) August 18, 2017

Bro said the White House had tried repeatedly to reach her during her daughter's funeral on Wednesday, but that she had not seen the messages from the president's office.

"At first I just missed his calls," Bro said. "The call — the first call looked like it actually came during the funeral. I didn't even see that message."

She said the were "three more frantic messages from press secretaries throughout the day."

"I thought well, I'll get to him later and then I had more meetings to establish her foundation, so I hadn't really watched the news until (Thursday) night," Bro said.

In an initial statement on Saturday, Trump blamed "many sides" for the clashes in Charlottesville and did not name white supremacists, white nationalists or neo-Nazis.

On Monday, Trump condemned the extremist groups by name, prompting Bro to publicly thanking Trump "for those words of comfort and for denouncing those who promote violence and hatred."

Then on Tuesday, in a makeshift news conference, Trump reverted to blaming all sides for the violence. In defending himself against broad criticism of his initial remarks, Trump also praised Heyer and cited her mother's words.

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“The young woman, who I hear is a fantastic woman,” Trump said, referring to Heyer. “Her mother wrote me and said — through I guess Twitter, social media — the nicest things and I very much appreciated that. I hear she was a fine, actually, incredible young woman. And her mother on Twitter thanked me for what I said”

Bro, however, said she strongly objected to the president's remarks on Tuesday that she believed equated the counter-protesters, like her daughter, with white nationalists, white supremacists and neo-Nazis.

A presidential phone call, she said, would do nothing to change that.

"You can't wash this one away by shaking my hand and saying, 'I'm sorry.' I'm not forgiving for that."

Asked if there was something she wanted to say to the president, Bro said, "Think before you speak."