President Joe Biden repeated the “fine people hoax” Wednesday, referring to the false claim that then-President Donald Trump praised neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 when he, in fact, condemned them.
Biden was reacting to a remark Trump had made about his “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington, DC, on Jan. 6, 2021 during a CNN town hall event Wednesday evening. Trump called the peaceful part of the rally “beautiful.” He also said some of those who had been detained at the Capitol for non-violent offenses were “great” people.
There were not fine people on both sides of Charlottesville.
The January 6th rioters were not good people.
End of story. pic.twitter.com/1Jc9yQwTvh
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) May 11, 2023
But Trump did not praise the violent rioters, as Biden’s tweet falsely implied. Much like Biden himself did in 2020, often, regarding the Black Lives Matter riots, Trump distinguished between those who were exercising constitutional rights in a sincere manner and those who resorted to violence or who “got out of control.”
As for the Charlottesville reference, Biden has long made the false claim that Trump called violent neo-Nazis “very fine people.”
Video of my confrontation with @JoeBiden over Charlottesville “very fine people” hoax. Note he always uses same script (bulging veins etc) like he’s trained to recite it. Media covered this but none linked to the transcript of Trump’s remarks that proves Biden lies 8/8/19 pic.twitter.com/6WD6q1Yhy8
— Joel Pollak (@joelpollak) August 13, 2020
As is clear from the full video and transcript of Trump’s remarks, he was referring to the non-violent protesters on both sides of the issue of the removal of a Confederate statue from a local park.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.