As strong as President Donald Trump's statement on the Charlottesville, Va., violence was, "the one thing he didn't say was, 'I condemn white race supremacists,'" former House Speaker Newt Gingrich told a "Fox News Sunday" panel.
"I do think if you're fair to him, the statement itself was pretty strong and pretty direct about condemning the violence, condemning bigotry," Gingrich told the panel. "I mean he talks very specifically about condemning racism. But I agree, I think that clearly he should talk out much more aggressively about it."
Gingrich, who often speaks in support of President Trump, added he expects the president to reiterate past condemnations of hate groups.
"I do think the president should speak up more clearly, and I suspect [Sunday] or [Monday] he will," Gingrich said, before pivoting to condemning violence on all sides as President Trump did in his statement Saturday.
"I'd also point out, though, from a conservative perspective, we've been watching a rising tide of violence in this country for good while now," Gingrich continued Sunday. "And, you know, when the chancellor of the University of California-Berkeley is spending $9,000 for an escape door because they assume students will occupy his offense, that just tells you that we have this pattern that's building and it's building.
"It's on both sides. It's dangerous," he added.
Gingrich defended the president against the general criticism he does not condemn white supremacists.
"Let me also point out, Trump explicitly repudiated the KKK in the campaign," Gingrich told the panel. "I mean the elite media may not want to believe it. Go back and look at the videotape. He explicitly repudiated it. He explicitly repudiated David Duke. It is a falsehood to suggest the conservatism, which believes in liberty, has anything to do with Nazism."
". . . In his inaugural, he said, all of us bleed the same blood. He said there's no grounds for racism. He said it is unpatriotic to be racist. You cannot be a good American and be a racist. That's [from] the inaugural."
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