Former Vice President Joe Biden repeated the false claim that President Donald Trump called neo-Nazis “very fine people” in Charlottesville, Virginia, adding the false claim that the president did not condemn the murder of a protester.
President Trump condemned neo-Nazis who marched in Charlottesville in August 2017 — “totally,” and repeatedly:
- Aug. 12, 2017: Trump condemned “violence “on many sides” in Charlottesville, after neo-Nazi and Antifa clashes
- Aug. 14, 2017: Trump condemned “neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups” in White House statement
- Aug. 15, 2017: Trump condemned neo-Nazis “totally,” praised non-violent protesters “on both sides” of statue debate
Trump also specifically condemned the murder of left-wing protester Heather Heyer, who was killed when a neo-Nazi rammed his car into demonstrators. The president said: “You can call it terrorism, you can call it murder. … The driver of the car is a murderer, and what he did was a horrible, horrible, inexcusable thing.” Biden’s claim is entirely false.
Biden launched his campaign on April 25, 2019 with the same false claim, claiming Charlottesville motivated him to run. Breitbart News confronted him in August 2019 with the fact that he was misquoting the president. Nonetheless, Biden has stuck to the same script for more than a year, with references to “bulging veins” and other repeated phrase.
On Thursday, addressing community leaders in Philadelphia, Biden claimed that Trump “decided that he was going to pit us against one another based on race.”
He then went on to recite his script on Charlottesville, adding — falsely — that when Trump was asked about a “young woman” who was killed (Biden did not name her) Trump said that there were “very fine people on both sides.”
As noted above, Trump’s reference to “very fine people” had nothing to do with the murder of Heather Heyer, but to peaceful protesters on both sides of the statue issue.
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). His new book, RED NOVEMBER, is available for pre-order. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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