Backlash against Trump intensifies

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK: Several leading members of Donald Trump’s Republican Party and key ally Britain sharply rebuked the US president on Wednesday after he insisted that white nationalists and protesters opposed to them were both to blame for deadly violence in the Virginia city of Charlottesville.

Trump’s remarks on Tuesday, a more vehement reprisal of what had been widely seen as his inadequate initial response to Saturday’s bloodshed around a white nationalist rally, reignited a storm of criticism and strained ties with his own party. The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, issued a statement that did not mention Trump by name but said "messages of hate and bigotry" from white supremacists, the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazi groups should not be welcome anywhere in the United States.

"We can have no tolerance for an ideology of racial hatred. There are no good neo-Nazis, and those who espouse their views are not supporters of American ideals and freedoms. We all have a responsibility to stand against hate and violence, wherever it raises its evil head," McConnell said.

Trump last week lambasted McConnell for the Senate’s failure to pass healthcare legislation backed by the president, and did not dismiss the idea of McConnell stepping down. In his comments at a heated news conference in New York on Tuesday, Trump said "there is blame on both sides" of the violence in Charlottesville, and that there were "very fine people" on both sides.

Ohio Governor John Kasich said there was no moral equivalency between the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis and anybody else. The president of the United States needs to condemn these kind of hate groups," Kasich said on NBC’s "Today" show.