NJ House candidate takes dig at Trump’s Charlottesville response in campaign ad

A Democratic candidate for a New Jersey congressional seat is firing back at President Trump’s comments that “both sides” were to blame for the violence at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va.

Mikie Sherrill, a retired U.S. Navy helicopter pilot and former federal prosecutor, is running in the Democratic primary to unseat Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.). In a new campaign ad, she cites her grandfather’s experience fighting Nazis during World War II to push back against Trump’s controversial response.

Sherrill describes in the ad how her grandfather was shot down over France and rescued by French resistance forces, who hid him from the Nazis.

{mosads}“For my grandpa there was never blame on both sides,” Sherrill said. “The Nazis were in the wrong, period.”

Her comment is a dig at Trump who said that “both sides” were to blame for the violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville in August.

Trump faced major backlash for his comments, as well as for not immediately condemning the white supremacists and neo-Nazis at the rally by name, who had gathered to protest the removal of a Confederate statue. They were met by counterprotesters, and some violence ensued, resulting in the death of one woman and the injury of 19 others when a man with alleged neo-Nazi ties plowed his car into a crowd.

“What about the alt-left that came charging at the — as you say, the alt-right?” Trump said. “Do they have any semblance of guilt? What about the fact they came charging with clubs in their hands, swinging clubs? Do they have any problem? I think they do. As far as I am concerned, that was a horrible, horrible day.”