Wednesday, Aug. 16, 2017 | 9:24 a.m.
WASHINGTON — Leaders of the four major U.S. military services are speaking out against racism and extremism after last weekend's violence in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Their comments on Twitter and in longer written statements make no mention of President Donald Trump's responses to the incident.
Military officers are trained to avoid politics. They traditionally see it as their duty to emphasize to troops core values such as racial equality and tolerance.
The Navy's top officer, Adm. John Richardson, was the first of the military chiefs to respond to Saturday's violence in Charlottesville. That evening he took to Twitter to say the events there were "unacceptable and mustn't be tolerated."
Other service chiefs followed Richardson but did not explicitly mention Charlottesville.
