The mother of Heather Heyer, who was killed at the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia on Saturday, said she would refuse to speak to President Donald Trump after seeing him compare the white supremacists who rallied in the city to the counter-protesters gathered to demonstrate against them, including her daughter.
“I have not, and now I will not,” speak to Trump, Susan Bro told “Good Morning America” Friday morning.
Heyer was killed when a man who had earlier been photographed with Vanguard America, a white supremacist group, allegedly rammed his car into a crowd of counter-protesters.
Bro said she hadn’t seen Trump’s statements until Thursday night, “and I’m not talking to the President now.”
“I’m sorry,” she continued. “After what he said about my child. And it’s not that I saw somebody else’s tweets about him. I saw an actual clip of him at a press conference equating the protesters, like Ms. Heyer, with the KKK and the white supremacists.”
Despite clear evidence that the rally, ostensibly to protest the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee from a Charlottesville park, was organized by white supremacists, Trump said “both sides” of the protest had “very fine people.”
“You had some very bad people in that group,” he said, referring to neo-Nazis. “But you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides.”
It marked yet another instance — aside from a prepared speech read from a teleprompter Monday — in which Trump equivocated on the moral standing of white supremacists.
“I’m not putting anybody on a moral plane,” he said.
Bro said she first heard from the President on Wednesday, four days after Heyer’s death. She said she missed his call because it came during her daughter’s funeral. Though Trump praised and memorialized Heyer in statements since Saturday, her mother said Trump’s statements comparing her to white supremacists couldn’t be forgiven.
“You can’t wash this one away by shaking my hand and saying I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m not forgiving for that.”
Watch below via “Good Morning America”
WATCH: “You can’t wash this one away by shaking my hand and saying I’m sorry.” Mother of Charlottesville victim speaks out. pic.twitter.com/vNiGNgFERi
— Good Morning America (@GMA) August 18, 2017
This post has been updated.
