Jeremy Corbyn has renewed his criticism of Donald Trump and said the US president’s response to the attack on protesters in Charlottesville was “not enough”.
The Labour leader said any president “should be able to condemn” white supremacists and the Ku Klux Klan following the rally which led to the death of an anti-racism campaigner at the weekend.
Corbyn spoke out during his visit to a key marginal late yesterday afternoon when he was due to promote Labour’s pledges on housebuilding.
His comments on Trump prompted Tory MPs to accuse him of “total hypocrisy” after his carefully-chosen form of words to condemn violence in Venezuela last week.
Yesterday Corbyn told the BBC that Trump had not gone far enough after the Republican finally delivered an explicit condemnation of the “KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans”.
Corbyn said: “What happened in Charlottesville was the KKK [Ku Klux Klan] and its supporters, white supremacists, arrived in Charlottesville in order to cause trouble.
“Surely every president of every country in the world… should be able to condemn that.”
Heather Hayer, 32, was killed on Saturday after a car was driven into a group of people protesting against a far-right rally.
Corbyn’s intervention into the US debate prompted an angry response from Tories who claimed the veteran socialist’s condemnation of violence “on all sides” in Venezuela – following a crackdown by president Nicolas Maduro – had been insufficient.
Tory backbencher Andrew Rosindell told the Daily Mail that Corbyn was “totally hypocritical”.
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