Axios

During this afternoon's press conference, President Trump avoided answering questions about his response to the violence in Charlottesville. When CNN's Jim Acosta asked why the president didn't initially condemn hate groups, Trump responded, "they have been condemned."

Acosta then pressed Trump on why he wasn't taking more questions. Trump pointed at Acosta and said, "I like real news, not fake news. You're fake news," before leaving the room. Acosta shouted after him: "Haven't you spread a lot of fake news yourself, sir?"

The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security warned months ago that white supremacists "were responsible for 49 homicides in 26 attacks from 2000 to 2016 … more than any other domestic extremist movement," per Foreign Policy, which obtained the intelligence bulletin detailing the warning, entitled, "White Supremacist Extremism Poses Persistent Threat of Lethal Violence."

These kinds of attacks outnumber Islamist incidents by about 2 to 1, per the Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute.

Why it matters: Candidate Trump ran on the idea that "anyone who cannot name our enemy is not fit to lead this country," as he told a rally in Ohio, but critics point out Trump's first statement on the violence in Charlottesville included a condemnation of violence on "many sides," and it took him until Monday to specifically condemn white supremacy.

President Trump told Fox News Sunday that he is "seriously considering a pardon" for Joe Arpaio, the former Arizona sheriff who was recently charged with contempt of court for refusing to obey a federal judge's order to stop traffic officers from racially profiling suspected undocumented immigrants.

"He has done a lot in the fight against illegal immigration. He's a great American patriot and I hate to see what has happened to him," said Trump.

Background: 85-year-old Arpaio, nicknamed "America's toughest sheriff", received national attention for his aggressive treatment of inmates, including "forcing inmates to wear pink underwear and housing them in desert tent camps where temperatures often climbed well past 100 degrees Fahrenheit," per Fox News. Arpaio endorsed Trump in January 2016, and later handled security for some of the then-candidate's rallies.

President Trump delivered unscheduled remarks at the White House Monday, where he condemned individuals who committed acts of violence on Saturday in Charlottesville, Virginia. He specifically singled out acts of racism as "evil." The statement comes after Trump's meeting with Attorney General Jeff Sessions and FBI Director Chris Wray.

• Key quote: "Racism is evil, and those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans."
• "The Department of Justice has opened a civil rights investigation into the deadly car attack that killed one innocent person and injured 20 others... To anyone who acted criminally in this weekend's racist violence, you will be held accountable."
• "No matter the color of our skin, we all live under the same laws. We all salute the same great flag. We are all made by the same almighty God."

Attorney General Jeff Sessions told CBS This Morning's Norah O'Donnell Monday that President Trump "absolutely" needs to specifically condemn neo-Nazis and white supremacists for their role in Saturday's deadly attacks in Charlottesville, Virginia. "His spokesman said it yesterday and I'm sure he'll reiterate that in the days to come," Sessions added.

Sessions also appeared on the TODAY show Monday, where he discussed the backlash Trump faced for his response to the attacks. Sessions said he thought "it was a good statement" and that it "directly contradicted the ideology of hatred and violence." He later added, "I'm sure he'll talk about it again soon … He will be speaking to the people today. I'm not sure what he'll say."

On Sunday, Vice President Mike Pence issued a broad condemnation of hate groups after the deadly attacks that took place in Charlottesville, Virginia on Saturday.

• His quote: "We have no tolerance for hate and violence from white supremacists, neo Nazis or the KKK."
• Pence defended President Trump's response to the attacks, and pointed a finger at the news media for spending "an awful lot of time focusing on what the president said and criticisms of what the president said instead of criticizing those who brought that hatred and violence," per NBC News.
• Pence, in Colombia for the first leg of his Latin America tour, was also asked whether Trump should have singled out white supremacists in his response to the violence, as Pence had done in his own statement. The vice president said he thinks Trump "spoke to a national moment, words the American people needed to hear — that we condemn acts of violence, acts of hatred."

Joint byline by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and SecState Rex Tillerson on lead Wall Street Journal op-ed, "We're Holding Pyongyang to Account:" The U.S., its allies and the world are united in our pursuit of a denuclearized Korean Peninsula":

"[T]he Trump administration, with the support of the international community, is applying diplomatic and economic pressure on North Korea to achieve the complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and a dismantling of the regime's ballistic-missile programs. We are replacing the failed policy of 'strategic patience,' which expedited the North Korean threat, with a new policy of strategic accountability."