Charlottesville Mayor Michael Signer (D) on Sunday ripped President Trump’s response to violent clashes in the city that were spurred by a white nationalist rally.
“Our democracy has been through a lot in the last century. Our city has been through a lot in the last century. We have come in this country through McCarthyism, segregation, Jim Crowe, and we’ve come through stronger than before that, but what’s going to happen now is that we’re all going to stand together on this new effort and that begins with a city like Charlottesville, but it should include the president,” Signer told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.”
{mosads}”Look at the campaign he ran. Look at the intentional courting, both on the one hand all of these white supremacist, white nationalist groups like that, anti-Semitic groups, and then look on the other hand the repeated failure to step up and condemn, denounce, silence, put to bed, all of those different efforts just like we saw yesterday, and this is not hard,” he continued.
“But to be honest, this is not about Donald Trump,” Signer added.
“I think this is about the United States of America, it’s about Virginia, it’s about Charlottesville.”
Signer in a separate interview said it’s time for the white nationalist movement to come to an end.
“The time has come for this to stop. This should be a turning point. This movement jumped the shark, and it happened yesterday,” he said on NBC’s “Meet The Press.”
“People are dying, and I do think that it’s now on the president and on all of us to say enough is enough. This movement has run its course.”
Signer’s comments come after Trump condemned the violence Saturday in the small, college town, but pinned blame on “many sides.”
Trump, who frequently blasted former President Obama for not saying “radical Islamic terrorism,” did not say “white supremacists” in his statement.
At least one person died in Charlottesville on Saturday, and dozens of others were injured.
–Rebecca Savransky contributed to this report, which was updated at 10:38 a.m.