'Unraveling our national fabric': Romney condemns Trump after Charlottesville

Republicans’ 2012 presidential nominee writes on Facebook that Trump’s comments ‘caused racists to rejoice’ and ‘minorities to weep’

Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, warned of an “unraveling of our national fabric” on Friday as he excoriated Donald Trump over his defence of people involved in a neo-Nazi rally.

Nearly a week after white nationalists led a bloody protest against the removal of a statue of Confederate general Robert E Lee, Trump continues to face backlash for blaming “both sides” for the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Senior Republican officials, titans of business, military leaders and even members of his own administration have rejected Trump’s view of the events and his attempt to draw moral equivalence between white supremacists and anti-racist counter-protestors.

On Friday, Romney wrote in a Facebook post: “Whether he intended to or not, what he communicated caused racists to rejoice, minorities to weep, and the vast heart of America to mourn.

“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 called this a “defining moment” for Trump’s presidency and urged him to apologize for his comments, which white nationalist leaders cheered as a validation of their antisemitic and racist ideology.

“The potential consequences are severe in the extreme,” Romney said. “Accordingly, the president must take remedial action in the extreme. He should address the American people, acknowledge that he was wrong, apologize. State forcefully and unequivocally that racists are 100% to blame for the murder and violence in Charlottesville.

“Testify that there is no conceivable comparison or moral equivalency between the Nazis – who brutally murdered millions of Jews and who hundreds of thousands of Americans gave their lives to defeat – and the counter-protestors who were outraged to see fools parading the Nazi flag, Nazi armband and Nazi salute. And once and for all, he must definitively repudiate the support of David Duke and his ilk and call for every American to banish racists and haters from any and every association.”

During remarks on Friday, the secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, delivered a forceful condemnation of racism and bigotry, declaring: “Hate is not an American value.”

The remarks were the sharpest yet from a member of Trump’s administration, drawing a clear contrast with the president’s insistence that there were “fine people” among the white supremacists who chanted “Jews will not replace us” and carried torches that evoked imagery from KKK rallies in decades past.

“We do not honor, nor do we promote or accept hate speech in any form,” Tillerson told an audience of diverse students at the state department. “And those who embrace it poison our public discourse and they damage the very country that they claim to love. So we condemn racism, bigotry in all its forms. Racism is evil; it is antithetical to America’s values. It’s antithetical to the American idea.”

On Thursday, the Republican senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, the Senate’s only black Republican, said Trump’s response “complicates this administration’s moral authority”. And Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, an ally whom Trump considered for secretary of state, warned that “our nation is going to go through great peril” if Trump was unable to deliver a clear message condemning the racism and antisemitism on display in Charlottesville.

The fallout continues, as Trump on Thursday weighed into the debate over whether to remove monuments and statues of Confederate leaders, decrying efforts to remove the memorials as “foolish”.

On Friday, the remaining members of the presidential advisory panel on arts and humanities resigned in response to Trump’s comments. In a statement, the commission said, “Reproach and censure in the strongest possible terms are necessary following your support of the hate groups and terrorists who killed and injured fellow Americans in Charlottesville.”

The first letter of each paragraph of the commission’s statement spells “RESIST”, a rallying cry among activists opposed to Trump and his agenda.

Also on Friday, House minority leader Nancy Pelosi endorsed a resolution that would censure Trump for his “defense of white supremacists following the violence in Charlottesville”.

“The president’s repulsive defense of white supremacists demands that Congress act to defend our American values,” she said in a statement. “With each passing day, it becomes clearer that the Republican Congress must declare whether it stands for our sacred American values or with the President who embraces white nationalism,” she continued.

“Democrats will use every avenue to challenge the repulsiveness of President Trump’s words and actions.”