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It took 7 years, but Snopes finally admits Trump did NOT call neo-Nazis ‘very fine people’

June 23, 2024 | | Print Article

It took the left-leaning “fact-checking” website Snopes seven long years, but they finally set the record straight that former President Donald Trump never called neo-Nazis and white supremacists “very fine people.”

The claim that Trump essentially embraced the extremist groups during a press conference following the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally in 2017 has been Democratic campaign fodder ever since. Not only did President Biden cite the alleged incident as a key factor in his decision to run in 2020, he repeated the lie as recently as just a few weeks ago — even though Trump denounced the groups in the very same breath, as Snopes acknowledged.

“In sum, while Trump did say that there were ‘very fine people on both sides,’ he also specifically noted that he was not talking about neo-Nazis and white supremacists and said they should be ‘condemned totally.’ Therefore, we have rated this claim ‘False,'” Snopes said on Friday.

The “fact-checking” site added additional context: “In a news conference after the rally protesting the planned removal of a Confederate statue, Trump did say there were ‘very fine people on both sides,’ referring to the protesters and the counterprotesters. He said in the same statement he wasn’t talking about neo-Nazis and white nationalists, who he said should be ‘condemned totally.'”

Trump’s remarks were prompted by a reporter who claimed neo-Nazis “started this thing.”

“Excuse me, they didn’t put themselves down as neo-Nazis, and you had some very bad people in that group. But you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides,” the then-president said. “You had people in that group — excuse me, excuse me, I saw the same pictures as you did — you had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name.”

He went on to accurately state that the left’s argument would lead to the removal of statutes of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson — which has come to pass in some areas since then.

“So you know what? It’s fine. You’re changing history, you’re changing culture, and you had people — and I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally. But you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists, okay? And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly,” Trump said. “Now, in the other group also, you had some fine people, but you also had troublemakers, and you see them come with the black outfits, and with the helmets, and the baseball bats, you got a lot of bad people in the other group too.”

Not that it matters. As has been well established by now, the media will twist the truth at their pleasing to support an anti-Trump narrative they feel morally obligated to advance.

Here’s a quick sampling of responses to the story, as seen on X:

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