U.S. RNC approves resolution condemning white supremacy but makes no mention of Trump's remarks

The Republican National Committee has approved a resolution condemning white supremacists, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and Nazis, at its summer meeting in Nashville without mentioning President Donald Trump's controversial comments on the Charlottesville violence.

"This has nothing to do with the president," said the resolution's sponsor, Bill Palatucci, the Washington Post quoted an RNC committee man from New Jersey, as saying. "This is the RNC saying that racism and bigotry have no place in America."

The important aspect to be noted is that the resolution makes no mention of Trump or the President Trump's multiple reactions to Charlottesville violence which led to three presidential advisory councils being disbanded as their members resigned in protest.Trump claimed that there is "blame on both sides" for the deadly violence, which attracted widespread bipartisan criticism.

 

"The racist beliefs of Nazis, the KKK, white supremacists and other like-minded groups are completely inconsistent with the Republican Party's platform," said the resolution of the committee on the final day of a three-day meeting in Nashville, the southern state of Tennessee.

Palatucci, an attorney who served as general counsel to Trump's presidential transition committee, said that he began drafting the resolution August 13, the day after a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville ended with the death of a counterprotester.

"The core issue was for us as RNC members to clearly and loudly denounce white supremacists," Palatucci explained. "There can be no hesitation for the Party of Lincoln."

"We recall that the Republican Party was founded in the struggle against slavery and a rejection of the racial beliefs underlying the institution of slavery," the resolution reads.

"The Republican Party subsequently led the fight to assure all human beings have equal standing before the law, promoting instead the ­foundational idea that each ­person be judged as an individual on merit and not on the color of skin or other circumstance of birth,"the resolution said.

The decision to remove a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee from a local public park had sparked a white supremacist rally on August 12 at Charlottesville in Virginia that later turned into violent clashes between rival protesters.