President Donald Trump was reluctant to condemn white supremacists who staged a deadly rally in Charlottesville, Va., over the weekend because he feared offending his base of supporters, Rev. Jesse Jackson told Newsmax TV on Tuesday.
"His was a common betrayal of real authority," the veteran civil-rights leader and founder of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition told Rita Cosby, guest host of Newsmax TV's "The Schnitt Show."
Jackson said Trump's first condemnation of the rally as the fault of "many sides" was unacceptable.
"To make a moral equivalent of neo-Nazis and white supremacists and the KKK to nonviolent demonstrators is a false equation – and America didn't accept that," Jackson said, noting that Trump finally called out those first three groups by name some two days later.
"I think he is supported by those extremist white groups. He was reluctant to call them out. They seem to be his base politically."
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Jackson said he agreed with those now demanding the removal of public statutes and monuments commemorating Confederate soldiers and leaders.
"[They] sought to engage in succession and slavery and division and segregation. . . . So those symbols should be removed. There are no Hitler statues in Germany," Jackson told Cosby.
"It was a very ugly, ugly period in American history and provoked the big war, and they lost the war and their symbols should be vanquished."
But, Jackson added, the process of removing them should be done with "civility."
Following Newsmax TV's interview with Jackson, Trump appeared to backtrack on Monday's comment the tragedy was the fault of racist hate groups, saying again both sides were to blame in the Charlottesville tragedy.
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