President Trump “caused racists to rejoice” when he said both sides were to blame for the violence in Charlottesville, Va., former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney said in a scathing statement on Friday.
Days after rebuking Trump for claiming that “many sides” were at fault for a rally that was organized by white supremacist groups, Romney went further in a statement on Facebook to say the president’s comments could lead to the “unraveling of our national fabric.”
“His apologists strain to explain that he didn’t mean what we heard. But what we heard is now the reality, and unless it is addressed by the president as such, with unprecedented candor and strength, there may commence an unraveling of our national fabric,” Romney wrote.
The former Massachusetts governor, who was once under consideration to be Trump’s secretary of state, blasted the president for jeopardizing U.S. relations with key allies and diminishing “America’s ability to help secure a peaceful and prosperous world” with his words.
“Who would want to come to the aid of a country they perceive as racist if the need were to arise, as it did after 9/11?” he wrote.
Trump “must take remedial action in the extreme” and apologize for his initial response to the events that transpired in Charlottesville, Romney said.
“Testify that there is no conceivable comparison or moral equivalency between the Nazis … and the counter-protesters who were outraged to see fools parading the Nazi flag, Nazi armband and Nazi salute,” he urged Trump.
Romney’s impassioned plea comes as the White House reels from the fallout of Trump’s erratic and ever-changing response to the violence and death of a 32-year-old woman in Charlottesville.
Trump, who has declined to visit the historic Virginia town, has privately expressed satisfaction with his response to Charlottesville in the days since he held an impromptu press conference on the issue, according to multiple reports.
