local leaders, elected leaders across the country were calling out this kind of vileness that was exhibited by some of these hate groups on saturday. i m disappointed it took him a couple of days, i know i got calls from senators in both political parties on saturday saying this is awful what was happening in charlottesville, but i will give the president the benefit that today he said the words, now we have to make sure that his department of justice acts on those words and that we fully pursue not only this one individual who recklessly murdered that one individual and hurt others, but that the justice department will go after some of these hate groups across the country, because they ll be back. you were the governor and i know you know charlottesville well. talk to me about what needs to be done there to heal these wounds and deal with the underlying problems. well, charlottesville is a community with a rich history of
of the nazi party. we don t expect to hear this in the 21st century in america, but what we are waiting for, is not only for the president to call this what it is, and reject neo-nazis or bring this to what he calls his enemies in the media, or the ceo of merck, it shouldn t be so hard to do what s right. and when he does that, we ll be waiting for the same kind of plan of action that sherylin talked about. we need to engage a policy agenda from all branches of government to halt bigotry in its tracks. it was very striking that in the second interview with peter alexander, that the vice president said it s also the media s fault for making such a big deal out of the president s remarks and not out of the initial attacks in charlottesville. at a time when oren hatch said
want to hear from the president, i know you want to hear policies going forward, but what would be important to hear as a laura, as a leader of the naacp legal defense fund, in terms of what kind of investigations should be launched by the attorney? we heard this morning that the attorney general is launching an investigation and i would love to hear attorney general sessions and the president describe this kind of violence and hate crimes as high priorities that they intend to undertake, not just for the incident in charlottesville, but all the incidents that they have been silent about and they would course correct afternoon their silence on this. i would like to see the president assign other agencies that could be brought to bear on
on saturday, that too is an important signal today. how will he convey the words, what words will he choose to say, will he fill the gaps that have been voids over the last 48 hours and will he perhaps have some new investigative information that will increase our understanding of what happened in charlottesville. we should also remember, george h.w. bush, disavowing the candidacy of david duke when he was running in louisiana all those years ago, back in 191991i believe, so there is a track record of presidents, not just named obama, but past republican presidents disavowing this kind of neo-nazi, ku klux klan activity. you heard from john mccain, from his sick bed in arizona, he was one of the first out with a statement on saturday, saying this kind of hatred and bigotry
say that white nationalism, white supremacy has no place here in charlottesville. so certainly a lot of people waiting to hear what the president would say today. while vice president pence over the last day and attorney general jeff sessions had gone further than the president did on saturday, they were waiting to hear what the president would say today. and it remains to be seen whether his comments a few moments ago satisfied folks here. certainly, this is a community that is reeling. they want to honor the victims of this tragedy, certainly the woman that was killed here, 32-year-old heather heyer. we have been seeing people come here, dropping off flowers throughout the day on their lunch break. this is, of course, the college town, the home of the university of virginia. and freshman orientation starts later this week. so this is a community that desperately wants to heal after what happened here over this weekend. and certainly they were also waiting to hear what the president w