Flashback: Jake Tapper Admits Trump Did Not Call Neo-Nazis ‘Very Fine People’

Joel B. Pollak / Breitbart News
Hannah Knudsen

A flashback of CNN’s Jake Tapper resurfaced Thursday after Breitbart News’s Joel Pollak questioned Joe Biden’s (D) decision to continuously repeat the fake news hoax that President Trump called neo-Nazis “very fine people” following the Charlottesville riots. 

Breitbart News confronted Biden, who has been using the “very fine people” hoax as a key part of his latest speeches, at the Iowa State Fair Thursday: “Mr. Vice President, are you aware that you’re misquoting Donald Trump in Charlottesville, he never called neo-Nazis ‘very fine people’?”

This exchange followed:

Joe Biden: No, he called all those folks who walked out of that — they were neo-Nazis. Shouting hate, their veins bulging.

Breitbart News: But he said specifically that he was condemning them.

Joe Biden: Not specifically.

Breitbart News: He said —

Joe Biden: No, he did not. He said, he walked out, and he said — let’s get this straight. He said there were “very fine people” in both groups. They’re chanting antisemitic slogans, carrying flags.

As Breitbart News has extensively reported, Trump did not refer to neo-Nazis as “very fine people”:

Trump specifically said, “I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally.”

He used the phrase “very fine people” to refer to non-violent protesters, both left and right, on either side of the question of the removal of a Confederate statue.

In that same press conference, the president also specifically condemned the murder of Heather Heyer, calling it “terrorism” and “murder.”

At the time, Trump said:

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.  You had people in that group – excuse me, excuse me, I saw the same pictures 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.

…

I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and white nationalists because they should be condemned totally.

…

Racism is evil, and those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.

Even CNN’s Jake Tapper admitted such in April.

“Now, elsewhere in those remarks, Trump did condemn neo-Nazis and white supremacists. So he’s not saying that the neo-Nazis and white supremacists are very fine people,” he said.

Politico correspondent Natasha Korecki tweeted out a partial video of the exchange, writing, “Up close confrontation at the Iowa state fair:this man accuses ⁦@JoeBiden of misquoting ⁦ @realDonaldTrump on white supremacists — and Biden tears into him.” The tweet prompted some in the media to accuse Pollak and Breitbart News of “stanning for” white supremacists:

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