The mother of the anti-Nazi protester killed in Charlottesville is now blaming the death of her daughter at the white supremacist rally on President Donald Trump and his "hateful agenda."
In an interview with The Daily Beast published on Thursday, Heather Heyer's mother Susan Bro said she believes the president's repeated refusals to condemn racists were partly responsible for motivating the alleged killer.
"I'm starting to come to that conclusion because he definitely pushes a hateful agenda," she said.
"He is the president of the United States," she added. "That carries a certain weight and power with it. I choose not to poke the bear in power, but I'm definitely not happy with how he has chosen to drive forward with white supremacy and neo-Nazis."
Police say James Alex Fields Jr. killed 32-year-old paralegal Heather Heyer when he drove his Dodge Challenger into a crowd of counterprotesters demonstrating against white supremacists who had converged on Charlottesville for a Unite the Right rally in August. Carrying tiki torches and chanting "Jews will not replace us," the white supremacists had met to protest the removal of a statue of Confederate commander Robert E. Lee.
Fields's ex-teacher later said his former student's beliefs in school were "along the party lines of the neo-Nazi movement."
In addition to allegedly killing Heyer, Fields injured 19 people with his car.
Trump was slow to condemn the white supremacists at the rally, at first blaming "many sides" for the violence, but later rebuked his statement and said there were "very fine people on both sides." Heyer's mother said the comment showed the president's true colors.
"You can't say there were good people coming into town with their fists taped prepared to draw blood and do harm. That's not good people. Nazis: bad people. White supremacists: bad people. And I don't see that you can call it any other way. If you choose to align yourself with those people, and you choose to call them 'good,' then you've told me what sort of person you are," Bro told the Daily Beast.
"He responds off the cuff. He doesn't bother to think before speaks, or very calculatedly is trying to manipulate all of us," she added. "I'm not sure which. I can grant there was a lot of violence on both sides, but to say there were good people on both sides—that's where I draw the line."
Bro received numerous calls from the White House during her daughter's funeral but refused to talk to the president and says she wants nothing to do with him.
"So now I have your number and now I know how I choose to respond to you. And in his case, that means: 'I'm not responding to you, you don't get my time of day.' I thought, 'Well, screw him, I'm not dealing with this.' I'm not talking to him. I have no need to go through this charade of pretending to be nice and happy," she said.
On Thursday, Fields will have a preliminary court hearing in the second-degree murder case, which carries a 20-year in prison term.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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