Ambassador Shapiro: Trump's remarks make me sick

Former US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro, an Obama appointee, slammed US President Donald Trump's response to the racist neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend.

A woman was killed at the rally in a car ramming attack by a white supremacist.

Shapiro criticized President Trump for not condemning the racist extremists harshly enough and for implying a moral equivalence between the two sides in Charlottesville.

"I'm going to be sick. Trump is ready to give backing and empathy to the extreme racist groups in Virginia. This was a group that called out against Jews and Americans. I don't know if he's a racist, but it cannot be that the President of the United States speaks this way. This is unacceptable," Shapiro said.

"How are we going to get through another three and a half years of this president? I don't know what will happen," he added.

Shapiro said that his criticism of Trump was not politically motivated.

"Obviously there are differences between the parties and I disagree with a lot of policy issues," Shapiro said in an interview with Channel 2 News CEO Oded Ben Ami . "It's not just me and not just Democrats, and almost all members of Congress and Republican governors strongly condemn President Trump's remarks."

President Trump on Tuesday blamed both sides for the violence.at a press conference from Trump Tower.

"They came at each other with clubs ... it was a horrible thing to watch," Trump said, adding that left-wing protesters "came violently attacking the other group."

“What about the alt-left that came charging the alt-right? Do they have any semblance of guilt? As far as I’m concerned that was a horrible day.”

“You had a group one side that was bad and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent, and nobody wants to say that but I’ll say it right now,” stressed Trump.

Several major columnists, after investigating the riot, took issue with the claim that the violence was only from the radical right protestors.

One suspect, 20-year-old James Alex Fields Jr., has been arrested for allegedly driving his car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing one woman and injuring 19.