BY VANESSA ROMO & MARTINA STEWART

Updated Aug. 13 at 10:50 a.m. ET

Political leaders used Twitter to respond to the violent confrontations that began Friday night in Charlottesville, Va.; continued with a "Unite the Right" rally that pitted members of the alt-right, Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazi groups against anti-racism counterprotesters on Saturday; and turned deadly when a car plowed into a group of pedestrians.

Republican officials, from the president to members of the House and Senate, went online to speak out against bigotry and violence. But President Trump came under criticism from some members of his own party for not speaking out forcefully enough.

While the president remained silent on the white nationalist march across the University of Virginia campus Friday night, he reacted to the street brawls, fistfights and attacks with homemade pepper spray the next day in a broadly worded tweet Saturday afternoon.

"There is no place for this kind of violence in America," Trump said, "Lets come together as one!"

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