President Trump on Friday again defended the white supremacists who rallied in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 and who prompted violence that led to the death of Heather Heyer at the hands of one of the neo-Nazis.

“People were there protesting the taking down of the monument of [Confederate army commander] Robert E. Lee — everybody knows that,” Trump told reporters outside the White House, making no reference to the white supremacists who organized the event.

Trump also used his comments on Friday to defend his remarks from a press conference shortly after the deadly riot, in which he said that there were “some very fine people on both sides” of the incident.



“I was talking about people that went because they felt very strongly about the monument to Robert E. Lee, a great general. Whether you like it or not, he was one of the great generals,” Trump said.

While the Unite the Right rally was nominally centered around the removal of the statue, the rally was in fact organized by white supremacists and white nationalists. Former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke even attended and spoke, having previewed the rally as an event to "take our country back."

The night before the violence, white marchers also carried torches through the streets of Charlottesville and chanted "Jews will not replace us" and the Ku Klux Klan slogan "blood and soil," which is a translation of a Nazi slogan.

