At a town hall event on Thursday, Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL) was pressed by a constituent to denounce Donald Trump’s claim that the violence at a Neo Nazi rally in Charlottesville was owed to “both sides.” That line has dogged Trump badly in recent weeks, to the point that he’s begun airbrushing it out of his retelling of how he handled the incident. But instead of distancing himself from Trump, Mast chose to echo him. In a testy exchange, the congressman claimed that some of those who had showed up to protest the Neo Nazi gathering in Charlottesville had done so with violent intent. “There were multiple people, from multiple sides that came out there with the intent of clashing with one another. That’s just the fact,” Mast said. One person died in the rally: a woman who was killed by a car driven by a white supremacist.
