CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday grilled senior White House adviser Kellyanne Conway about President Donald Trump’s initial response to the deadly white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017.

Conway, during a heated exchange with Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union,” defended Trump’s infamous “very fine people on both sides” comment he made at the time to describe “Unite the Right” rallygoers as well as anti-racism counterprotesters.

“It was called the Unite the Right rally, and it was formed by people like Richard Spencer, who is a white supremacist,” Tapper told Conway. “Friday night was the tiki torch march and ‘Jews will not replace us.’ ... Saturday, Heather Heyer was killed. Who were the very fine people?”

Conway said Trump had been speaking generally about the debate over removing Confederate monuments. Unite the Right rally organizers stated their goals were to unify the American white nationalist movement and oppose the removal of the Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville’s Lee Park.

“He’s not talking about white supremacists,” Conway said. “In fact, he condemned them in no uncertain terms.”

Tapper continued to press Conway, noting that Trump had been specifically referring to people in Charlottesville at the time. But Conway attempted to pivot the discussion to The New York Times’ publication of an anti-Semitic cartoon in its international edition before bashing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).