Source: Anadolu Agency / Getty
Susan Bro initially planned on returning President Trump’s phone calls, but upon hearing his despicable remarks during Tuesday’s press conference, she quickly (read: rightly) changed her mind.
“I have not [spoken to Trump], and now I will not,” the mother of Heather Heyer told Robin Roberts on Friday on ABC’s Good Morning America. Heyer, 32, died last week after James Alex Fields, Jr. drove a car into a group of people participating in a counterprotest against white nationalists in Charlottesville, Va. He has been charged with 2nd degree murder.
According to Bro, the president attempted to reach her on multiple occasions following the death of her daughter, but due to fatigue surrounding her funeral, she had decided she would return his call at a later time. However, she says that won’t be happening after all.
“I hadn’t really watched the news until last night, and I’m not talking to the president now,” she said. “I’m sorry. 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.”
On Tuesday, Trump returned to his initial stance on the Charlottesville attack, stating “both sides” were to blame for violence.
“You had a group on one side who was bad, and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent,” he said. “Nobody wants to say that, but I’ll say it right now.” He then dangerously suggested there were “very fine people on both sides.”
Bro says she has no plans on forgiving the president. And why should she?
“You can’t wash this one away by shaking my hand and saying ‘I’m sorry,’” she said.
“It was important to her to speak up for people that she felt were not being heard, to speak up when injustices were happening,” she stated in a recent interview with CNN. “She saw in the lives of many of her African-American friends particularly and her gay friends that equal rights were not being given.”
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