The mother of Heather Heyer, the young woman killed by a racist during the Charlottesville riot, says she will not talk to President Trump.
ABC News’s Robin Roberts asked Susan Bro, the mother of Heather Heyer, if she has spoken to the president in the wake of her daughter’s death.
“I have not and now I will not,” Bro said on “Good Morning America,” adding she had received dozens of missed calls from the White House on Wednesday, which was the day of her daughter’s funeral.
“I’m not talking to the president now. I’m sorry, after what he said about my child. It’s not that I saw somebody else’s tweets about him. I saw an actual clip of him at a press conference equating the protesters, like Ms. Heyer, with the KKK and the white supremacists,” she said.
Bro was referring to a press conference the president gave at Trump Tower on Tuesday in which he laid blame on “both sides” for the violence in Charlottesville and said not everyone attending the white supremacist rally, which was organized to protest the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, was a white supremacist.
There were some “very fine people” on both sides of the protest, Trump said.
Heyer was killed on Saturday when a car, allegedly driven a man with white supremacist ties, rammed into a crowd of people protesting the rally. Nineteen others were injured. The alleged driver, James Alex Fields Jr., was arrested and charged with second-degree murder.
Trump dedicated a tweet to Heyer on Wednesday, saying “she will long be remembered by all.”
“You can’t wash this one away by shaking my hand and saying ‘I’m sorry.’ I’m not forgiving for that,” Bro said.
The White House had previously said it was trying to find a time to set up a phone call between Trump and Bro.
Trump has face a barrage of bipartisan criticism for his remarks, which many interpret as defending neo-Nazis and other white supremacists.
Bro told NBC News on Thursday she’s received death threats since her daughter’s death.
“They tried to kill my child to shut her up. Well, guess what? You just magnified her,” Bro said at Heyer’s funeral on Wednesday.
The problem for Mrs. Bro is that she thanked President Trump for his words of “comfort” following the press conference that she now says so offended her.
“Thank you, President Trump, for those words of comfort and for denouncing those who promote violence and hatred,” Susan Bro, mother of Heather Heyer, said in a statement shortly after Mr. Trump belatedly called out white supremacists and other hate groups during a press conference Monday afternoon.
“My condolences, also, to the grieving families of the two state troopers and quick recovery for those injured,” Ms. Bro said.
https://youtu.be/m9y2y0HOG3w
I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say that Mrs. Bro took the temperature of the media and realized that saying anything good about Trump was not a good idea. She dutifully fell in line to parrot the latest media opinion on Trump’s remarks.
But you can’t blame a grieving mother for lashing out at someone who gave comfort to white supremacists. Perhaps Mrs. Bro didn’t realize the implications of Trump’s words at the time. Some on the right still don’t.
And how classy are those white supremacist loons, threatening the mother of a woman killed by a racist? How very brave of them.
Trump is allowing this situation to simmer and fester either because he is deliberately making race a wedge issue or he simply doesn’t know what to do. His presidency is slipping away to irrelevancy and he shows no signs of wanting to retrieve the situation.
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