White House counselor Kellyanne Conway defended President Donald Trump’s controversial remarks about the 2017 violence in Charlottesville, Va., as Conway argued that Trump’s comments have been distorted and misunderstood.

She told CNN Sunday that Trump “condemned white nationalism and neo-Nazis and the KKK during the Charlottesville incident.” Conway conceded that Trump said there were “very fine people on both sides.” But she argued that the president “was talking about the debate over removing statues,” notably a monument to Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.

Conway said, “When President Trump condemned racism, bigotry, evil violence, and then took it many steps further and called out neo-Nazis, white supremacists, KKK–that is darn near perfection.”

The Charlottesville episode was pushed to center stage by former Vice President Joe Biden last week when he announced his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination. Biden said Trump, by talking about “very fine people on both sides,” had “assigned moral equivalence between those spreading hate and those with the courage to stand against it.”

On Friday, Trump said he “answered perfectly” when he praised people “on both sides” in the Charlottesville incident. Trump went on to say, “I was talking about people that went because they felt very strongly about the monument to Robert E. Lee, a great general…..Whether you like it or not he was one of the great generals. I have spoken to many generals here, right at the White House, and many people thought of the generals, they think maybe he was their favorite general. People were there protesting the taking down of the monument of Robert E. L:ee.”

Democratic Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina told ABC Sunday that Trump was wrong to praise Lee. Clyburn said Lee “was a slave owner and a brutal slave master.” At the Charlottesville rally, a neo-Nazi drove his vehicle into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing one person and injuring dozens.