WASHINGTON (JTA) — President Donald Trump will “absolutely” sign a congressional resolution that “rejects white nationalism, white supremacy and neo-Nazism as hateful,” his spokeswoman said.
“He looks forward to doing so as soon as he receives it,” Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Wednesday during a briefing with reporters.
With bipartisan majorities, the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives passed resolutions this week in the aftermath of the far-right rally in Charlottesville last month that reject “white nationalism, white supremacy and neo-Nazism as hateful expressions of intolerance that are contradictory to the values that define the people of the United States.”
The resolutions also urge the president and his administration “to speak out against hate groups that espouse racism, extremism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism and white supremacy, and use all resources available to the president and the president’s Cabinet to address the growing prevalence of those hate groups in the United States.”
In an unusual move, the sponsors exercised a mechanism that requires the president’s signature on the resolution even though it is nonbinding and written to reflect the sense of Congress. The aim was to address concerns that Trump had equivocated following clashes last month between white supremacists and counterprotesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, that included a deadly attack on a counterprotester carried out by an alleged white supremacist. Sponsors wanted Trump’s commitment to the idea of condemning white supremacists.
The resolution assiduously avoids blaming any other parties for the violence. The victim, 32-year-old Heather Heyer, is named and honored in the resolution.
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