WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump on Thursday sided with White supremacists who oppose the removal of monuments to Confederate leaders and tweeted that the move was “sad” and “foolish.”

A plan to remove the statue of a confederate general from a park in Charlottesville, Virginia, led to violent protests by White supremacists last week. White supremacists see Gen. Robert E. Lee, who fought for slavery, as a national hero. Anti-racism activists see such monuments as a reminder of the country’s dark past.

One woman was killed when a White nationalist rammed his car into a crowd of counter-protesters who supported the city’s decision to remove the statue. Two police officers, who were monitoring an armed White supremacist rally, also died when their helicopter crashed.

“Sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments,” Mr Trump said in a series of tweets. “You can’t change history, but you can learn from it.”

In another tweet, President Trump suggested that those who were demanding the removal confederate figures could also target America’s founding fathers, if they were allowed to do so.

“Robert E Lee, Stonewall Jackson — who’s next, Washington, Jefferson? So foolish!” he tweeted. “Also, the beauty that is being taken out of our cities, towns and parks will be greatly missed and never able to be comparably replaced!”

In his initial reaction to last week’s violence, Mr Trump refused to blame White supremacists and said that hatred on “many sides” caused the clashes. Since then, he has condemned White supremacist protesters as racist but refused to call the man who rammed his car into the crowd a terrorist, as demanded by counter-protesters.

On Tuesday, Mr Trump reiterated his stance that “both sides” of the Charlottesville were responsible for the violence in the small Virginia city. He condemned the neo-Nazi and Ku Klux Klan supporters who accompanied the supremacists rally, but insisted there were “very fine people” among those protesting the removal of Gen. Lee’s statue in Charlottesville.

US TV commentators say that Mr Trump is popular among those who want confederate monuments to stay intact and does not want to harm his support base by condemning the supremacists. ACBS News poll showed that while a majority of Americans disapproved of Trump’s response to the violence in Charlottesville, two-thirds of Republicans approved of his response.

Published in Dawn, August 18th, 2017