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But some Republicans spoke out against Trump, using his name directly to emphasize that they don't agree with what he said in Trump Tower.

During his news conference, Trump blamed "both sides" in the protests and equated the white supremacists on one side with the counter-protesters on the other side.

Some Republicans, to avoid more conflict, denounced racism after Trump's news conference -- and some indirectly referred to his statements when they called him out.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, a strong critic of Trump, took a hard stance on Wednesday against Trump's remarks at the news conference.

"Through his statements yesterday, President Trump took a step backward by again suggesting there is moral equivalency between the white supremacist neo-Nazis and KKK members who attended the Charlottesville rally and people like Ms. Heyer. I, along with many others, do not endorse this moral equivalency," Graham said in a statement.

He continued: "Many Republicans do not agree with and will fight back against the idea that the Party of Lincoln has a welcome mat out for the David Dukes of the world."

Sen. Marco Rubio, who ran against Trump in the GOP primary, tweeted in a thread, "Mr. President,you can't allow #WhiteSupremacists to share only part of blame. They support idea which cost nation & world so much pain"

Sen. Jeff Flake, a strong critic of Trump, tweeted, "We can't accept excuses for white supremacy & acts of domestic terrorism. We must condemn. Period."

Sen. Cory Gardner also used Trump's name to say he was wrong at a town hall in Colorado.

Sen. Jerry Moran also called out Trump by name, writing in a tweet: "White supremacy, bigotry & racism have absolutely no place in our society & no one - especially POTUS - should ever tolerate it"

"This is terrible. The President of the United States needs to condemn these kinds of hate groups," said Kasich, who ran against Trump in the Republican presidential primary. "The President has to totally condemn this. It's not about winning an argument."

Rep. Ed Royce tweeted, "The President needs to clearly and categorically reject white supremacists. No excuses. No ambiguity."

And Rep. Leonard Lance tweeted, "Mr. President, there is only one side: AGAINST white supremacists, neo-Nazis, anti-Semites & the KKK. They have no place in America or GOP."

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who also ran against Trump in the GOP primary, tweeted in a thread denouncing racism: "I urge @POTUS to unite the country, not parse the assignment of blame for the events in Charlottesville."

And Rep. Will Hurd told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on "The Situation Room" that Trump should "apologize ... Racism, bigotry, anti-Semitism of any form is unacceptable."

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell didn't respond directly to Trump after his news conference but instead released a statement after news that white supremacists are planning a rally in McConnell's home state of Kentucky.

"We can have no tolerance for an ideology of racial hatred," McConnell said in a statement, without using Trump's name. "There are no good neo-Nazis, and those who espouse their views are not supporters of American ideals and freedoms. We all have a responsibility to stand against hate and violence, wherever it raises its evil head."

House Speaker Paul Ryan also didn't use Trump's name directly but called the President out in opposition to what he said in the news conference.

Ryan tweeted, "We must be clear. White supremacy is repulsive. This bigotry is counter to all this country stands for. There can be no moral ambiguity."

Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee who has been a strong critic of Trump since the 2016 election, also didn't use his name to call him out: "No, not the same. One side is racist, bigoted, Nazi. The other opposes racism and bigotry. Morally different universes."

GOP Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen tweeted, "Blaming 'both sides' for #Charlottesville?! No. Back to relativism when dealing with KKK, Nazi sympathizers, white supremacists? Just no."

Former Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush released a joint statement where they denounced racism but didn't use Trump's name.

"America must always reject racial bigotry, anti-Semitism, and hatred in all forms," they said in a statement. "As we pray for Charlottesville, we are reminded of the fundamental truths recorded by that city's most prominent citizen in the Declaration of Independence: we are all created equal and endowed by our Creator with unalienable rights. We know these truths to be everlasting because we have seen the decency and greatness of our country."

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Here are the Republicans denouncing Trump by name - CNN

In the hours after President Trumps wavering response to the neo-Nazi-fueled clashes last weekend that left one dead and 19 injured in Charlottesville, Sen. Cory Gardner assumed the role of moral conscience of the Republican Party.

Mr. President we must call evil by its name, the Colorado Republican tweeted within hours of Trumps assertion Saturday that many sides were to blame for the mayhem. Gardner reiterated those comments on the Sunday talk-show circuit, directly calling out Trumps equivocation on who had prompted the clashes.

But for the next six weeks, one of Gardners prime responsibilities will be to tout Trumps virtues to Alabama Republicans in an effort to help Sen. Luther Strange secure the nomination for a special election later this year.

Gardner is chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the political arm of GOP leadership that is staunchly behind Strange. And Stranges path to victory, after finishing second in Tuesdays initial ballot, will rely heavily on reminding Alabama conservatives that they continue to support Trump and they should transfer that support to Trumps choice for senator Strange.

This is what Trump has done to congressional Republicans. Its almost the very definition of what Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), in his new book Conscience of a Conservative, labeled the Faustian bargain between Trump and the GOP.

At a moment when Republicans are horrified by Trumps moral equivalence on white supremacy, they also rely on him to continue endorsing and promoting their colleague, Strange, who was appointed interim senator after Jeff Sessions became Trumps attorney general.

To do otherwise might cede the nomination to Roy Moore, a controversial former judge who might put the seat, held by Republicans for more than 20 years, at risk of falling to the Democratic nominee in the general election.

[Sen. Luther Strange will face jurist Roy Moore in Alabamas Republican Senate runoff]

The NRSC and Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC run by close allies of Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), went out of their way to praise Trump late Tuesday night after Strange and Moore advanced to the Sept. 26 runoff election.

President Trumps pick for Senate successfully advanced to the runoff election, and we are confident he will be elected to remain in the Senate come December, Gardner said in a statement.

We are proud to have strongly supported President Trumps number-one ally in this race, and we believe the Presidents support will be decisive as we head into the next phase of this campaign, Steven Law, president of Senate Leadership Fund, said in his statement.

Law was McConnells most senior adviser until 2001, when he became chief of staff to Elaine Chao, McConnells wife, who had just been confirmed as labor secretary. Law remained close to Chao and eventually won confirmation as deputy secretary in his own right, the No. 2 position in that department.

On Tuesday afternoon, at Trump Tower in Manhattan, Chao stood over the presidents left shoulder, ostensibly there to tout the still undefined infrastructure package Trump wants to promote. Shes now the presidents secretary of transportation.

Chao endured last weeks volley of angry comments from Trump toward her husband, as he blamed McConnell for the Senates failure to advance legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act. On Tuesday, she stood to Trumps left and listened to the president describe the many good people in the Charlottesville marches which had been organized by white supremacists and included people carrying flags in honor of Hitlers Nazi regime.

Chaos family roots lie in the Shanghai region. Her father, a merchant marine fighting Maos rebels, fled to Taiwan as China fell to a communist regime that would slaughter millions. It was a brutal reign that in some ways echoed the Nazis in Germany.

She faced questions after Trump ended his comments Tuesday. I stand by my man both of them, Chao said, declining to criticize Trump.

McConnell waited until after 10 a.m. Wednesday to comment after Trumps Tuesday pronouncement that there were two sides to a story about Charlottesville, taking note the same groups now want to come to McConnells home states capital of Lexington.

Their message of hate and bigotry are not welcome in Kentucky and should not be welcome anywhere in America, he said in a prepared statement.

In his book, Flake took barely veiled shots at McConnell for not building up a real conservative policy agenda in the early years of Barack Obamas presidency, instead publicly declaring that defeating Obama in 2012 was his top priority as GOP leader.

The corollary to this binary thinking being that his failure would be our success and the fortunes of the citizenry would presumably be sorted out in the meantime, Flake wrote.

Flake went on to mock GOP leaders who believed that, despite Trumps erratic behavior and sometimes repudiation of conservative principles, unified Republican control of Washington would lead to big victories such as tax cuts.

If this was our Faustian bargain, then it was not worth it, Flake wrote.

Now Republicans find themselves once again clashing with Trump on moral grounds, denouncing his position on white supremacists. This follows their critiques of Trump as a candidate when he attacked the war heroics of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), referred to Mexicans as rapists, engaged in a weeks-long feud with a Pakistani-American father whose son died on the battlefield in Iraq, called for a travel ban of all Muslims and was discovered to have bragged in vulgar terms about kissing, groping and trying to have sex with women during a 2005 conversation caught on a hot microphone.

But down in Alabama, one of the most conservative states in the nation and one with its own racially divisive history, Trump remains extraordinarily popular.

Among Alabama Republicans, Trumps favorability rating tops 85 percent, according to two GOP strategists following the Senate race there. And Trump has endorsed Strange, which the NRSC and McConnells super PAC plan to tout as the single biggest reason the states Republicans should rally around Strange.

These same Republicans say they will continue to denounce Trump every time he equivocates when they see moral clarity. The hope in the short term is to avoid the political and moral association with the presidents more troubling words and deeds.

My answer will never change on this issue, Gardner tweeted Tuesday, after wrapping up several town halls. We must all call evil by its name and never back down from denouncing hate and racism.

The risk in the long term, however, is having to face down what increasingly feels like an unanswerable question: Why they continue to repeat the cycle, again and again, without any real change from the president.

Read more from Paul Kanes archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.

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In Alabama, Senate Republicans have tied themselves to Trump. At what cost? - Washington Post

Forget impeachment. Forget Robert Mueller's investigation. Forget Russia. Well, don't forget them, but put them to the side for a moment. Investigations and impeachments and Senate trials take time, and we don't have time any more. The president has to go now, and it's up to his fellow Republicans to get him to leave.

On Tuesday, the president of the United States said there were good people marching alongside the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis and white supremacists.

We can't have a president who says good people march with Nazis. We just can't. We have so much work to do on race in this country, so many people who need to understand the depth of systemic racism that pervades every aspect of society. We need dialog and understanding, but right now we're in an emergency, and this guy has to go.

It can't just be up to liberals and leftists to make this call anymore. It's not enough for Republicans like Speaker Paul Ryan to issue generic statements denouncing racism. We have a racist president. Every elected official needs to denounce him by name.

But even that doesn't go far enough. It's time, after nearly 30 weeks with him in office stomping on the Constitution and basic human decency, to demand his resignation. Every time we thought there were no more lines for him to cross, he finds a bright red one and leaps over it.

This can't be a partisan issue any more. At some point all but the most extreme Republicans have to be able to recognize a national emergency when they see one. If not now, when? If this president isn't unfit for the office after what he said Tuesday, who would be?

Will it work? Would Trump go? It's tough to predict, but never forget how sensitive Trump is to criticism. With enough pressure from the entirety of the political structure in this country, including a refusal to work with him, he might dig in but he just might give up and go back to running his real estate empire. Even someone as self-delusional as he is can only face so much pressure to resign before giving in.

Hell, Republicans, you could even come out ahead in the political calculus. Making Trump resign would be a momentary embarrassment for the party, but you'd end up with Mike Pence, a bedrock conservative who will sign your giant tax cuts for the wealthy and not call you names on Twitter.I know you're afraid of your party's primary voters, but sometimes you have to do what's right for the country rather than yourself.

It certainly isn't a difficult moral question. What Donald Trump said in his press conference Tuesday was so awful, so contrary to all notions of basic human decency, that it immediately makes him utterly unfit to be president.

Sure, he's been unfit all along stupid and cruel and corrupt and craven. But this is different, and this is worse. It's unprecedented in the history of the modern presidency. We've had presidents of both parties whose policies disproportionately hurt people of color. We've have presidents who use dog whistles and political strategies to appeal to white voters' racial resentment.

But even these presidents could speak eloquently against hate and extremism when it reared its head. None of them ever looked at a crowd of racists bearing torches, shouting, "Jews will not replace us," and declared there were good people among them.

A good person shouts back. Immediately. Trump took three days to denounce the most extreme marchers, then one day later undid what little good he had done with his reluctant remarks. He stood at a microphone and praised people who stood with neo-Nazis and the KKK.

There's no question what's right for the country. President Trump must resign as soon as possible. And he will not do so without political pressure from the people in his own party. History will look back at this moment, and it will not judge kindly the people who couldn't muster the decency to do the right thing.

Republicans, if you believe in America, if you believe in the decency of our people, then your path is clear. Tell Trump to resign. Make the call so loud and so universal he cannot ignore it.

And if he clings to power in the face of massive pressure from all sides, then you can impeach his ass.

Watch below:Whether Trump eventually will be forced out of office is as much a political question as it is a legal one.

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Republicans Must Tell Trump to Go Now - RollingStone.com

The poll found that the share of Republicans expressing confidence in Russian President Vladimir Putin doubled to 34 percent from 17 percent in 2015. | Alexei Druzhinin, Sputnik/Kremlin Pool Photo via AP

By MATTHEW NUSSBAUM

08/16/2017 02:00 PM EDT

Updated 08/16/2017 02:06 PM EDT

Russian President Vladimir Putin is enjoying rising popularity among Republicans according to a new poll from the Pew Research Center.

The poll found that the share of Republicans expressing confidence in Putin doubled to 34 percent from 17 percent in 2015, when Donald Trump launched a campaign for the White House that was seen as friendly toward Moscow.

Story Continued Below

Though most Americans view Russia negatively, Moscow's overall popularity in the United States has risen since 2014, when it plummeted after the country annexed Crimea. Twenty-nine percent of Americans now have a favorable view, compared with 19 percent in 2014, the poll found.

But the partisan gap is stark, as congressional committees and federal investigators scrutinize Russias meddling in the 2016 election, including hacks of Democratic operatives email accounts. The investigations are eyeing any ties between Russia and Trumps campaign, though the president calls the probe a hoax.

Just 13 percent of Democrats have confidence in Putin, the poll found. And while 61 percent of Democrats consider Russia a major national security risk, only 36 percent of Republicans do, the poll of 1,505 adults conducted from Feb. 16 to March 15 found. The poll had a margin of error of 3 percentage points.

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The partisan gap is a recent development, said Margaret Vice, a senior researcher at Pew and the lead author on the report.

Weve seen quite a shift on the side of Republicans, with Republicans now being much more favorable toward Russia, Vice said, adding that the shift was "quite significant."

The ideological split exists in other countries as well, she said, with those on the right in Italy, Greece and Australia also holding warmer views toward Putin.

Those who place themselves on the right of the spectrum are much more likely to be confident in Putin as a leader, she said.

But Vice said the American right's recent warmth toward Putin still stood out.

"In most of the 13 countries in which ideology was asked in 2015 and 2017, the ideological split in views toward Russia and Putin have not changed significantly, outside of the U.S.," Vice said.

Still, Americans have an overwhelmingly negative view of the country, with just 14 percent saying Russia respects the personal freedoms of its people.

Russias popularity in the United States used to be substantially higher nearly half of Americans had a favorable view in 2010 but tumbled after the annexation of Crimea in 2014. Russian government forces continue to assist Ukrainian separatists. Putins government also has sided with Syrian President Bashar Assad in the civil war there, and it has tried, mostly through influence campaigns, to destabilize democracies from Europe to the United States.

Trump frequently praised Putin during the campaign, and the two spoke at length during a recent G-20 meeting in Hamburg. Improved relations with Russia were a centerpiece of Trump's foreign policy platform, but the revelations of election interference have all but eliminated the possibility of any rekindled friendship in the near future.

Trump recently begrudgingly signed new sanctions on the Russian regime after they were passed by veto-proof majorities in Congress.

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Poll: Republicans' confidence in Russia's Putin on the rise - Politico

On the eve of talksbetween the United States, Mexico and Canada to renegotiatetheNorth American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Republican San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer is encouragingpolicymakers to look at thesuccess story the pacthas created inhis city.

Free trade works, Faulconer told the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on Tuesday evening. Weve grown our exports in San Diego by $5 billion since NAFTA. Mexico is our biggest export partner from San Diego.

As mayor of the states second-largest city and throughsheer attrition of Republicanofficeholders Faulconer is seen as a leading figure in Californias GOP. While once again declaring that he is not running for governor in 2018 as some have encouraged, Faulconer laid out his blueprint for the partys return to statewide relevance, which includes support for free trade policies.

President Donald Trump has called NAFTA the worst deal ever made, and argued that talks beginningWednesday should focus on reducing the trade deficit with Mexico, which he says has cost the United States manufacturing jobs.

Faulconer disagrees, and will travel to Washington, D.C. next month in an effort to convince lawmakers that NAFTA has been a job creator at the border.

Im going to tell that story of how free trade works, of how our relationship with Mexico is a strength, of how were creating those good quality jobs, he said. If we dont tell our story of success, nobody is going to tell it for us.

Most of Faulconers remarks on Tuesday night outlined his model of the New California Republican.

The mayor wants his party to takea big-tent approach that encourages inroads into minority communities, focuses on infrastructure development and government reform, and preaches a moderate stance onimmigration and the environment.

Faulconer said those principals have allowed him to win two elections in the Democratic-majority city of San Diego.

I campaigned in communities Republicans wrote off as lost, and Democrats took for granted, he added.

But Faulconerreiterated that he will not run for Governor in 2018, reasoning that theres a lot of unfinished business and I love the job.

He wasnt willing to throw his weightbehind the two Republicans already in the race, Assemblyman Travis Allen, and San Diego businessman John Cox. Instead, it sounded like Faulconer will take on the role of recruiter before next Junes primary.

Im sure were going to have a lot of great candidates come out, he said. Ill be extolling some of my fellow Republicans to jump in.

Guy Marzorati is a producer for The California Report andKQED's California Politics and Government Desk. Guy joined KQED in 2013. He grew up in New York and graduated from Santa Clara University. Email: GMarzorati@KQED.org

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San Diego Mayor Pushes NAFTA and 'New California Republicans' - KQED