NEW YORK -- The Senate's top Republican on Wednesday condemned the "messages of hate and bigotry" carried by the Ku Klux Klan and white supremacists. But like other top GOP officials, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell did not criticize President Donald Trump, who said a day earlier that white supremacists don't bear all the blame for last weekend's violence in Charlottesville, Va.
"We all have a responsibility to stand against hate and violence, wherever it raises its evil head," McConnell said in a statement, noting that white supremacists were planning a rally in his home state of Kentucky.
"Their messages of hate and bigotry are not welcome in Kentucky and should not be welcome anywhere in America," he said.
McConnell's statement comes as the Republican Party grapples with the latest political crisis created by its leader. This one follows a violent weekend clash between white supremacists and counterprotesters that left more than a dozen people injured. One woman was killed when a car was driven into a crowd of the counterprotesters, and two Virginia state troopers died in a helicopter crash while monitoring the protests.
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Trump said Tuesday that he sympathized with some of those who were protesting the proposed removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville, and that there were "some very bad people" among the neo-Nazis and KKK members who organized Saturday's protest. He also placed blame for Saturday's violence on "both sides," and said "you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides."
The comments sparked a backlash across the political spectrum. Few Republican officeholders defended the president, but few called him out by name over them either.
One who did call him out, South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, said Wednesday that the president "took a step backward by again suggesting there is moral equivalency between the white supremacist neo-Nazis and KKK members who attended the Charlottesville rally" and the people demonstrating against them.
"Many Republicans do not agree with and will fight back against the idea that the party of Lincoln has a welcome mat out for the David Dukes of the world," Graham added.
Former Republican Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush weighed in on the issue, releasing a joint statement that stopped short of criticizing Trump directly.
"America must always reject racial bigotry, anti-Semitism, and hatred in all forms," the Bushes said.
MILITARY CONDEMNATIONS
The U.S. military's most senior leaders, too, have publicly repudiated the racial violence in Charlottesville, declaring that the nation's armed forces as unequivocally against hatred.
By midmorning Wednesday, the military's four service chiefs each had issued firm statements on the matter.
The military's first reaction came from Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson, who Saturday night, well before the dust had settled in Charlottesville, issued a news release calling the bloodshed "shameful."
The Navy, he added, must be "the safest possible place -- a team as strong and tough as we can be, saving violence only for our enemies."
Top officers from the Army, Marines and Air Force made similarly sharp statements.
In a tweet posted early Wednesday, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley said racial hatred runs counter to the military's values and "everything we've stood for since 1775."
Milley's counterpart in the Marines, Gen. Robert Neller, offered a similar rebuke Tuesday night. "No place for racial hatred or extremism in USMC," he tweeted.
Neller's spokesman, Lt. Col. Eric Dent, said as the top Marine, Neller felt compelled to reaffirm "who we are and what we stand for."
"It was not," Dent said via email, "meant as a stab at the president."
Also Wednesday, the Air Force's chief, Gen. David Goldfein, said on Twitter that he is of like mind.
"I stand with my fellow service chiefs in saying we're always stronger together -- it's who we are as #Airmen," he wrote.
TRUMP GETS SUPPORT
Though Trump's overall approval rating is low, a small group of supporters rose to his defense, praising him for his response to the violence in Charlottesville.
"You got racism in both factions, on both sides," former New Hampshire GOP Chairman Jack Kimball said. "Trump has zero fault here. None."
The stakes are high for Republicans, some of whom face midterm elections next year. Also, Republicans need the president's support as they prepare to tackle some tough issues. They hope to work with him to enact legislation on infrastructure and tax changes, for example.
The political tap dance has frustrated at least one member of Trump's diversity council, chief executive officer of the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce Javier Palomarez, who called Trump's response to the Charlottesville violence "a monumental failure in leadership."
He challenged those who denounced racial bias in general terms but didn't call out the president by name.
"That's a sign of weakness, and I don't think the American people and the Republican Party is going to forget," said Palomarez, who noted the he will remain on Trump's diversity council "for now."
Trump loyalists in key states said they are ready to fight for their leader. And there were signs that the divide between the loyalists and establishment Republicans is already shaping the midterm political landscape, when Republican control of Congress will be at stake.
"We've always had these weak, skittish, so-called Republicans in the D.C. crowd. They're always peeing their pants," said Corey Stewart, a former Trump aide who has opened a 2018 Senate bid in Virginia.
Nevada Republican Danny Tarkanian, who is challenging Republican U.S. Sen. Dean Heller, said those criticizing Trump's response to the white supremacist rally were "splitting hairs."
"It was clear the media went out of their way to find fault with his statement," Tarkanian said.
Heller, who is considered one of the most endangered Republicans in the nation heading into the 2018 election, posted a statement on Twitter late Tuesday that stopped short of criticizing the president: "There is no defense or justification for evil in the form of white supremacists and Nazis. None," he wrote.
'YOU JUST MAGNIFIED HER'
In Charlottesville, meanwhile, the mother of the woman hit and killed by the car at Saturday's protest urged mourners at a Wednesday memorial service to "make my child's death worthwhile" by confronting injustice the way her daughter did.
"They tried to kill my child to shut her up. Well, guess what? You just magnified her," said Susan Bro, who received a standing ovation from the hundreds who packed a downtown theater to remember Heather Heyer, 32.
Heyer was eulogized as a woman with a powerful sense of fairness. Many of the mourners wore purple, her favorite color.
State troopers were stationed on streets around the Paramount Theater, just blocks from where Heyer died. White nationalists who had vowed to show up outside the service were nowhere to be seen.
Heyer, a white legal assistant from Charlottesville, was killed and 19 others were injured when the car plowed into counterprotesters who had taken to the streets to condemn what was believed to be the country's biggest gathering of white nationalists in at least a decade.
The driver of the car -- James Alex Fields Jr., 20, of Ohio -- was arrested Saturday and charged with murder and other offenses, according to police.
U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Wednesday that Fields' case could be prosecuted as a hate crime, saying federal authorities still investigating the case could decide to prosecute the driver in a number of ways.
Sessions cautioned that no federal charges were imminent.
Trump on Wednesday tweeted for the first time about Heyer, calling her "beautiful and incredible" and a "truly special young woman."
Separately, two women who were injured when the car rammed into the protesters filed a lawsuit Tuesday seeking damages from the rally's organizer and more than two dozen leaders, groups and websites affiliated with the self-proclaimed alt-right.
The lawsuit was filed in circuit court in Charlottesville by Tadrint Washington and her sister Micah Washington, who said they were physically and emotionally injured by Saturday's events.
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Information for this article was contributed by Steve Peoples, Thomas Beaumont, Jonathan Lemire, Bill Barrow, Brian Witte, Sarah Rankin, Jason Dearen and Gary Fineout of The Associated Press; by Alan Feuer of The New York Times; and by Mark Berman and Andrew deGrandpre of The Washington Post.
A Section on 08/17/2017