August 18, 2017

Heather Heyer’s Mother Says She’s No Longer Interested in Speaking to Donald Trump

“You can’t wash this one away by shaking my hand and saying I’m sorry.”

The mother of Heather Heyer, the 32-year-old woman who was killed by a white supremacist in Charlottesville, Virginia, said she has no interest in speaking to President Trump after his remarks Tuesday blaming multiple sides for the violence that took place last weekend.

“I’m not talking to the president now, I’m sorry,” Susan Bro said on Good Morning America Friday morning. “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 white supremacists.”

Speaking with immense composure, Bro explained that she received several calls from the White House during her daughter’s funeral on Wednesday. She told Robin Roberts that she didn’t initially return those calls due to time constraints. But after watching his remarks, Bro now said she has no intention of doing so.

“You can’t wash this one away by shaking my hand and saying I’m sorry,” she added. “I’m not forgiving for that.”

Trump has drawn intense, bipartisan criticism for his equivocal remarks condemning white nationalists in the wake of Charlottesville, where Heyer was killed by a white supremacist who drove through a crowd of counter-protesters. After initially asserting “many sides” were behind the violent clashes on Saturday, Trump eventually bowed to mounting pressure two days later and issued a more forceful statement directly denouncing neo-Nazis, white nationalists, and racism.

But during a Tuesday press conference, he aggressively retreated from those remarks, telling reporters there were some “very fine people” on both sides of the protest.

“What about the alt-left that came charging at the, as you say, alt-right?” Trump asked. “Do they have any semblance of guilt?” 

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