Trump went on to equate Lee and his fellow Confederate general Stonewall Jackson with George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. The president went on to repeatedly equate both protesters and counter-protesters: “I’m not putting anybody on a moral plane,” said Trump. Trump insisted that reporters should define the “alt-right” to him and condemned the “alt-left” for “charging at people without a permit and they were very, very violent”. The president insisted to the assembled press that he knew more about the events in Charlottesville because he “had watched this very closely, much more closely than you people watched it”. Trump insisted: “I wanted to make sure that what I said was correct, not make a quick statement.

Source: The Guardian August 15, 2017 20:37 UTC