TRUMP REACTIONS | Corker says criticism meant to influence

BRIDGEWATER, N.J. (AP) — Sen. Bob Corker says his sharp criticism this week of Donald Trump is meant to influence the president and those around him.

The Tennessee Republican and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee questioned Trump’s stability and competence after the president said that white supremacists don’t bear all the blame for the melee in Charlottesville, Virginia, last weekend. A young woman was killed after being struck by a car driven into a crowd of people protesting the white nationalists’ rally.

On Friday, Corker told reporters he’s not heard directly from Trump, but that he’s sure the president is “very aware” of his comments. Corker said they were aimed at getting the president to focus on uniting the country.

Corker’s Senate seat is up for re-election next year, but he has not yet publicly announced whether he will seek a third term.

Another Republican senator says President Trump “muddies the water” when he assigns blame to anyone other than white nationalist groups for the deadly violence last weekend in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma says the melee in Charlottesville “was solely the responsibility of the white nationalists that were . . . provoking what was occurring there.”

Lankford says Trump needs “to stay very consistent and clear” in his opposition to white supremacists, neo-Nazis and other hate groups.

Lankford says, “Any time he steps up and tries to equate two groups or two conversations, I think that muddies the water.”

Earlier today, the mother of a woman who was killed while protesting a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., says she won’t talk to President Trump because of comments he made after her daughter’s death.

Speaking Friday on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Susan Bro said she initially missed the first few calls to her from the White House. But she now says she won’t talk to the president after a news conference in which Trump equated violence by white supremacists at the rally with violence by those protesting the rally.

Bro’s daughter, 32-year-old Heather Heyer, was killed and 19 others were injured when a driver rammed a car into a crowd of demonstrators last Saturday. An Ohio man, James Alex Fields Jr., has been arrested and charged with murder and other offenses.