Joe Biden Repeats Charlottesville ‘Fine People Hoax’ in AP Interview

President Joe Biden repeated a falsehood known as the “fine people hoax” in an interview this week with the Associated Press, falsely claiming that his predecessor praised a mob of neo-Nazis who rioted in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017.

Biden has relied heavily on the hoax for the past three years, citing it as his reason for running for president, and reciting it to NATO leaders in Brussels earlier this year. But it is false: Trump had said the neo-Nazis should be “condemned totally.”

Trump had used the phrase “very fine people” to refer to peaceful protesters, both left and right, on either side of the debate over the removal of a statue of Confederal general Robert E. Lee from a park. He distinguished them from violent extremists.

The hoax was debunked publicly during the 2020 vice presidential debate and again in the second impeachment trial in 2021.

Biden told the AP, according to the transcript:

BIDEN I made a commitment and I think I can say that I’ve never broken, if I make a commitment. I wasn’t going to run again, this time. I mean for real. I was not going to run. I just lost my son, I was teaching at Penn, I liked it, until all those guys came, come out of the woods …

AP: Charlottesville.

BIDEN: … the Charlottesville folks and this other guy said “good people on both sides” when an innocent woman was killed, etc. And, I made a decision. I’ve been doing this too long to do anything other than to try to do what was right.

The Associated Press reporter did not challenge Biden’s assertion, though it has been repeatedly shown to be false.

Biden also told the AP that he believed a recession was “not inevitable,” despite indicators pointing to a slowing economy.

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 recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.