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Charlottesville Mayor Slams Trump: 'We Just Aren't Seeing Leadership from the White House'

August 13, 2017

Charlottesville Mayor Michael Signer (D.) continued to criticize Donald Trump on CNN after saying violence in his city laid "right at the doorstep of the White House," saying Sunday there was no leadership coming from the president.

Violent clashes between white supremacists and counter-protesters occurred in Charlottesville over the weekend, and on Saturday a man with alt-right ties was arrested and charged with murder on suspicion he purposefully rammed his car into a group of counter-protesters, killing one and injuring 19.

On "State Of The Union," Signer criticized Trump for not specifically calling out white supremacism on Saturday, as well as during the campaign.

"Look at the campaign he ran," Signer said. "Look at the intentional courting, both on the one hand of all these white supremacist white nationalist, groups like that, anti-Semitic groups, and then look on the other hand, the repeated failure to step up, condemn, denounce, silence, put to bed all those different efforts, just like we saw yesterday."

Signer said that Trump needed to define the car attack specifically as an act of terrorism.

"There's two words that need to be said over and over again: domestic terrorism and white supremacy," he said. "That is exactly what we saw on display this weekend, and we just aren't seeing leadership from the White House."

Signer said that there is the potential for bipartisan leadership by uniting on this issue.

"We certainly are going to see leadership from cities like Charlottesville, from mayors, leaders all around the country—left and right, Republicans and Democrats—if there's an issue that can unite the country, that this can be a turning point for this democracy, I think it just happened right now this weekend in Charlottesville," he said.

He said that Trump's statement blaming "many sides" for the violence caused him to "hang his head."

"It was more of a lot of the same that I think we've seen," Signer said. "But to be honest, this is not about Donald Trump."