Fact-checking website Snopes corrected the infamous “very fine people” comment used by and about Trump seven years later.
Trump made the remarks at a press conference on Aug. 15, 2017, following violent protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend's removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. Democratic Party They took Trump's comments out of context and stuck to the claim that he had called neo-Nazis and white supremacists “very fine people.”
Snopes Ahead of Thursday's 2024 presidential debate, the presumptive Republican 2024 presidential nominee set the record straight, acknowledging that he said neo-Nazis and white supremacists “should be totally condemned.”
I'm surprised this has come up now Snopes https://t.co/B2GB40ZIvG pic.twitter.com/6UQXUcNAVD
— Byron York (@ByronYork) June 23, 2024
“At a press conference after a rally to protest plans to remove Confederate statues, President Trump said, 'There are very fine people on both sides,'” referring to protesters and counter-protesters. In the same statement, he said he was not referring to neo-Nazis or white supremacists, who he said 'should be completely condemned,'” Snopes confirmed.
Quoted by Snopes Social media Posts The claim will be re-evaluated with a “False” rating starting in spring 2024. In the full video of the August 2017 exchange, Trump tells the reporter, “I'm not talking about neo-Nazis or white supremacists,” Snopes also provides a transcript of the exchange in the video. (Related article: “I wouldn't say the Secret Service was excited”: Donald Trump reflects on historic visit to North Korea)
The reporter began by asking Trump whether he held “the alt-left and white supremacists” to the “same moral standard.” Trump responded that he “doesn't hold anybody to a moral standard,” and said that groups the reporter called “the left” had come at the other side “with a club.”
August 15, 2017: After Charlottesville, President Trump called neo-Nazis very fine people.
Is that so? No, it's not.
The media miscontextualized his remarks, in which he clearly stated he was not referring to neo-Nazis.
Rather, he was referring to those who opposed the demolition… pic.twitter.com/83PVDdTBWd
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) March 17, 2024
“With all due respect, they don't call themselves neo-Nazis. There were some very bad people in that group. But there were also very fine people on both sides. There was a group, and — with all due respect, I saw the same pictures as you — that group was people who came together to protest the removal of a statue that meant a lot to them and the renaming of Robert E. Lee Park,” Trump said.
“George Washington and Robert E. Lee are not the same,” the reporter said.
Trump told reporters that Washington “was a slave owner” and questioned whether the first president “should no longer have his place now.” He criticized the idea of ”changing history” and then listed off past presidents by name. He asked whether statues of Thomas Jefferson should be removed, before launching into an explicit condemnation of neo-Nazis and white supremacists.
“I'm not talking about neo-Nazis and white supremacists, because those are completely condemnable,” Trump told reporters, “but there were many other people in that group who were not neo-Nazis or white supremacists, and the press completely misrepresented them.”
president Joe Biden Biden used the Charlottesville incident as the premise for his 2020 presidential campaign launch on April 25, 2019. The first two words the Democratic candidate spoke in his announcement video were “Charlottesville, Virginia,” before quoting Trump without context that “there are very fine people on both sides of the aisle.” Over dramatic music, Biden said Trump was “a threat to this country” and “a threat like I've never seen in my lifetime.”
