After Donald Trump made brief remarks on Monday condemning white supremacists and neo-Nazis in broad terms, Charlottesville, Virginia, victim Heather Heyer’s mother—whose name is Susan Bro—issued a statement thanking him for “the words of comfort and for denouncing those who promote violence and hatred.” Trump said during his already-infamous press conference the next day that he “really appreciated” Bro’s “beautiful statement”—but also reiterated his earlier argument that “bad people” on “both sides” in Charlottesville were responsible for violence and that “some very fine people” had been involved in the “Unite the Right” rally. (To be clear, “Unite the Right” was organized by a known extremist and advertised as a “pro-white demonstration” via a Nazi-themed poster.)
On Good Morning America on Friday, as you can see above, Bro said that Trump’s staffers have attempted to contact her—though she notes that they didn’t actually begin reaching out until Wednesday during her daughter’s funeral, four days after her death—but that after learning about what he said at the Tuesday event, she will not return his call:
I’m not talking to the president now. I’m sorry. After what he said about my child. 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.
“I have not” spoken to the president yet, Bro said, “and now I will not.”
