Samantha Bloom, the mother of the 20-year-old suspect who allegedly drove his car into a crowd of protesters, admitted that she knew her son was going to a rally. However, she didn’t know the specifics of the rally, and just thought it had something to do with President Donald Trump.
Saturday night, Ms. Bloom sat down with The Associated Press in Toledo, Ohio. Bloom implied that she knew her son was going to a rally, but didn’t really question him about the specifics. “I just knew he was going to a rally. I mean, I try to stay out of his political views,” said the Ohio mother. “You know, we don’t, you know, I don’t really get too involved, I moved him out to his own apartment, so we — I’m watching his cat.”
When the reporter informed her that the rally her son attended was one set up by white nationalists, she replied that she assumed the rally to be about Donald Trump. “I thought it had something to do with Trump. Trump’s not a white supremacist. He had an African American friend so…”
In a different interview, this time with the The Toledo Blade, Bloom said, “I told him to be careful. [And] if they’re going to rally to make sure he’s doing it peacefully.”
Bloom told AP reporters that she had no idea about Saturday’s deadly vehicular incident in Charlottesville. The mother of the suspect apparently found out about her son’s crime when she was approached by reporters for an interview. She said she was surprised, and “Yeah, that he would run his car into a group of people for… I’m really not clear on…”
The AP reporter pressed the suspect’s mother on if he told her more about his plans at Saturday’s rally in Virginia. She seemed to indicate that he was attending an alt-right rally. However, she said she thought it was an ‘albright’ gathering. “Like I said, I don’t really talk to him about his political views,” she said. “He just — so I don’t really understand what the rally was about or anything, so… I just know there was — he did mention it was ‘albright’? What is it? Al–?”
“Alt-right?” replied the reporter, interrupting Bloom mid-sentence.
“Albright,” said Bloom, still incorrectly pronouncing alt-right.
Bloom told the AP that her son grew up in Florence, Kentucky. They later relocated to Toledo, Ohio.
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