White House scrambles to explain Trump's response to clashes

BEDMINSTER, N.J. -- The White House scrambled Sunday to elaborate on President Donald Trump's response to deadly, race-fueled clashes in Charlottesville, Virginia, as he came under bipartisan scolding for not clearly condemning white supremacists and other hate groups after the altercations.

As the chorus of criticism grew, White Houses aides were dispatched to the morning news shows, yet they struggled at times to explain the president's position.

A new White House statement Sunday explicitly denounced the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazi groups, but it was attributed to an unnamed spokesperson and not the president.

Trump remained out of sight and silent, save for a few retweets.

One was about two Virginia state policemen killed in a helicopter crash while monitoring the Charlottesville protests, another about a Justice Department probe into the violence.

In the hours after a car plowed into a group of anti-racist counterprotesters Saturday, Trump addressed the violence in broad strokes, saying he condemns "in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides."

Speaking slowly from his New Jersey golf club while on a 17-day working vacation, Trump added: "It's been going on for a long time in our country. Not Donald Trump. Not Barack Obama. It's been going on for a long, long time."

The White House statement Sunday went further.

"The president said very strongly in his statement yesterday that he condemns all forms of violence, bigotry and hatred and of course that includes white Supremacists, KKK, neo-Nazi and all extremist groups."