Alright, let's start off with this article by ABC:
Note first of all that this is NOT labeled as an opinion article. So they really have no excuse for this one. As usual, they use the term "White Supremacist" as a blanket term for all the right-wingers gathered at Charlottesville last year, even though considerably less than half of those in attendance could be considered as such. Many, perhaps most could be considered white nationalists (not the same thing as white supremacists), but not all of them could be considered as this.
Last year, Trump said that "both sides" were responsible for the violence. This was not an unfactual statement, and it shouldn't have been controversial: left-wing counterprotesters chose to show up to the rally which the right-wing protesters had a permit for and stir up trouble. We have a picture of a counterprotester throwing a newspaper box at a protester. One counterprotester was wielding a lighted spray can (effectively, an improvised flamethrower). There's a photo of at least one protester with a big swell and fresh cut on his face. The counterprotesters seized and burned flags from protesters, and I'm sure they didn't just ask for the flags. There is no doubt that the counterprotesters engaged in unlawful and violent activities.
The source of the protest (the "Unite the Right" rally) in the first place was the scheduled removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee, the confederate general who brilliantly led the Confederate army during the Civil War. The statue had been in place since 1924. Some of the people wanted the statue to remain for white supremacist reasons, but there are also more sensible reasons for opposing its removal.
Anyways, when Trump said that "both sides" were behind the violence, he said something that about half of the country (the conservative half) agreed with and half of the country (the liberal half) was outraged over. However, the latter half's outrage was unreasonable. Trump didn't say "Those Antifa goons shouldn't have been there", but instead rightly blamed both sides. This was about as close to bipartisan as one's gonna get with President Trump. It was a more or less Presidential thing to say, and in any case it was not the media's place to decide whether or not Trump said the right thing. Instead, they took what he said and tried to turn it into some kind of big controversy.
And now, one year later, those same people try to look back on Trump's statement as something that still "puts him on the spot" today, even though literally the only reason he was ever in a "spot" for this is because of the media's unethical interference.
