WASHINGTON — The nationwide push to dismantle Confederate memorials divided Congress’s most senior Democrats on Thursday, as Representative Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader, pressed for the removal of Confederate statues from the Capitol while her Senate counterpart tried to keep the focus on President Trump’s equivocation over white nationalists.

“The Confederate statues in the halls of Congress have always been reprehensible,” Ms. Pelosi said, putting pressure on the House speaker, Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, to act. “If Republicans are serious about rejecting white supremacy, I call upon Speaker Ryan to join Democrats to remove the Confederate statues from the Capitol immediately.”

Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, took a very different tack, saying that Mr. Trump and his chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, were “trying to divert attention away from the president’s refusal to unequivocally and full-throatedly denounce white supremacy, neo-Nazism and other forms of bigotry.”

The division highlighted how delicate the political path forward might be for Democrats after the deadly violence in Charlottesville, Va., this past weekend. While large majorities of Americans say they disagree with the beliefs of white nationalists and the Ku Klux Klan, even Democratic voters are divided over the removal of Confederate memorials.