“Duck Dynasty” star Korie Robertson says she doesn’t understand why President Trump didn’t speak out sooner and more forcefully against white supremacists after they rallied this month in Charlottesville, Virginia.
“It was shocking and scary, the fact that it seemed like he wasn’t willing to call them out” after the violence that erupted that day, Robertson said in an interview that aired on CNN Thursday afternoon.
The President first denounced “hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides” without mentioning the white supremacists at the event. Two days later he condemned white supremacists, neo-Nazis and the KKK. But later that week he said “there is blame on both sides,” referring to counterdemonstrators, and said that there were “fine people” on both sides.
Robertson, in an exclusive interview with CNN, said she believes there is “absolutely” no moral equivalence between white supremacists and the counterprotesters who were there that day.
“When he came back and tried to say there’s good people on both sides and all that, that’s when it got even more shocking for me, because I was like, ‘I don’t know how you could say there are good people marching with torches, shouting Nazi slogans, wearing Hitler shirts, spewing all amounts of hate.'”
“So if there was a good person that showed up there, they would leave when they saw what was happening. So that floored me, and I don’t really understand that,” she said.
Retweeted Obama’s post-Charlottesville message
Robertson is the wife of famed CEO of Duck Commander and Buck Commander, Willie Robertson, whose family and business are chronicled in the “Duck Dynasty” reality series on A&E.
Robertson said that even though her husband was an early supporter of Trump and spoke at the Republican National Convention in July 2016, the family was divided over the election.
“Willie was outspoken and supported Trump from the beginning; and I was not. So we had a lot of discussions about it. And we could agree to disagree, as well,” Korie Robertson said.
Robertson said she ultimately voted for Trump — but that she didn’t make the decision until Election Day. Her choice, she said, came down to Hillary Clinton’s views on abortion.
CNN spoke to Robertson days after she retweeted former President Barack Obama’s widely shared Twitter message on the day of the Charlottesville violence.
Obama tweeted a quote from Nelson Mandela’s 1994 autobiography “Long Walk to Freedom” that said, “No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”
Obama’s post was the most liked in Twitter history.
“There’s so much divisiveness on Twitter, on social media — so many people fighting — that to see something that was positive and such truth, it just felt like light was winning,” Robertson said. “And I thought, I’m just going to retweet that as well.”
Thinks Confederate monuments should come down
The Charlottesville rally happened in part to protest the pending removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E Lee. Since then, a number of local governments across the country have decided to take down Confederate monuments.
Robertson, a Louisiana resident, said she agreed that such statues should come down.
“It’s important to remember our history, so that we don’t repeat it,” she said. “But we don’t need to revere that part of our history.”
‘Be a leader that unifies’
Robertson said it was time for Trump to change.
“Say you were wrong. … Why are you still fighting? What are you trying to prove at this point?” she said. “Let’s just come together, and be a leader that unifies, that brings people together.”