Trump blames 'both sides' for violence at Virginia white supremacist rally

US President Donald Trump unabashedly insisted on Tuesday that both left- and right-wing extremists resorted to violence during a weekend rally by white supremacists in Virginia, and that some present were peacefully protesting plans to remove a Confederate monument when the upheaval began.

Trump, taking questions from reporters in the lobby of Trump Tower in New York, reverted to his initial comments blaming "many sides" for Saturday's violence in Charlottesville, a day after bowing to pressure to explicitly condemn the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups.

When David Duke and white supremacists cheer your remarks, you're doing it very, very wrong.

- Senator Chuck Schumer

"They came at each other with clubs ... it was a horrible thing to watch," Trump said during what was supposed to be an announcement about his administration's infrastructure policy. He also said left-wing protesters "came violently attacking the other group".

Trump has faced a storm of criticism from Democrats and members of his own Republican Party over his response to the deadly violence, which erupted after white supremacists converged in Charlottesville for a "Unite the Right" rally in protest of plans to remove a statue of Robert E Lee, commander of the pro-slavery Confederate army during the US Civil War.

Many of the rally participants were seen carrying firearms, sticks and shields. Some also wore helmets. Counter-protesters likewise came equipped with sticks, helmets and shields.

The two sides clashed in scattered street brawls before a car ploughed into the rally opponents, killing one woman and injuring 19 others. A 20-year-old Ohio man, James Fields, said to have harboured Nazi sympathies, was charged with murder.

Trump's detractors dismissed his revised statements on Monday as too little too late, but his remarks on Tuesday reignited the controversy.

Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke immediately applauded Trump on Twitter.

"Thank you President Trump for your honesty & courage to tell the truth about #Charlottesville & condemn the leftist terrorists in BLM/Antifa," Duke wrote, referring to Black Lives Matter (BLM) and anti-fascists.

'Very wrong'

Democrats seized on Trump's latest words as evidence that Trump sees white supremacists and those protesting against them as morally equivalent.

"By saying he is not taking sides, Donald Trump clearly is," Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer of New York, said. "When David Duke and white supremacists cheer your remarks, you're doing it very, very wrong."

In a similar vein, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, said Trump's characterisation of the violence missed the mark.

“Neo-Nazis, Klansmen and white supremacists came to Charlottesville heavily armed, spewing hatred and looking for a fight," he said.

“One of them murdered a young woman in an act of domestic terrorism, and two of our finest officers were killed in a tragic accident while serving to protect this community. This was not 'both sides'.”

Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO labour federation representing 12.5 million workers, became the latest member of Trump's advisory American Manufacturing Council to resign in protest.

"We cannot sit on a council for a president who tolerates bigotry and domestic terrorism," Trumka said. "President Trump's remarks today repudiate his forced remarks yesterday about the KKK and neo-Nazis."

Three other members of the council - the chief executives of pharmaceutical maker Merck & Co Inc, sportswear company Under Armour Inc and computer chipmaker Intel Corp - resigned on Monday.

Lee’s statue

In his remarks on Tuesday, Trump also sympathised with protesters seeking to keep Lee's statue in place but offered no equivalent remarks for those who favoured its removal.

"You had people in that group ... that were there to protest the taking down of a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E Lee to another name," Trump said.

Trump also grouped former presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, two of the nation's founding fathers, together with Confederate leaders such as Lee, Jefferson Davis and Stonewall Jackson, who fought to separate Southern states from the Union, noting that all were slave owners.

"Was George Washington a slave owner? Will George Washington now lose his status? Are we going to take down statues to George Washington? How about Thomas Jefferson? ... Because he was a major slave owner," Trump said.

In a sometimes heated exchange with reporters shouting questions, Trump said, "You also had people that were very fine people on both sides."

He said that while neo-Nazis and white nationalists "should be condemned totally," Trump said protesters in the other group "also had trouble-makers".

Meanwhile, United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday said that "racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia" were "poisoning our societies".

"We must stand up against them. Every time. Everywhere," Guterres said in a Twitter post.