Trump defends monuments to pro-slavery Confederacy

US president Donald Trump dug in defiantly in his response to racial violence in Virginia, echoing the position of white nationalists by intensifying his opposition to the removal of monuments to the pro-slavery Civil War Confederacy.

Mr Trump’s presidency has been further engulfed in controversy over his response to last Saturday’s events in the Virginia college town of Charlottesville.

Violence erupted when white nationalists marched in protest over the planned removal of a statute of Robert E. Lee, the Confederate army commander in the Civil War that ended in 1865. A woman was killed when a man described as a white nationalist crashed his car into the counter-protesters.