In Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, protesters peacefully gathered to support and oppose the removal of a Confederate monument in the public square. A white supremacist intentionally drove his car into the protesters, killing one and injuring five.
Then-President Donald Trump, during a press conference about the tragedy, said: “I’ve condemned neo-Nazis. I’ve condemned many different groups. But not all of those people were neo-Nazis, believe me. … 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.” He also said, “You had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides.”
Critics ignored the “and I’m not talking about” part and accused Trump of defending the attacker and violent protesters as “very fine people on both sides.” That lie has become an article of faith for Trump haters.
In March, President Joe Biden, in Brussels, Belgium, repeated the lie. At a press conference, ostensibly about Ukraine, Biden told the world that Trump’s alleged racist response to Charlottesville inspired Biden to enter the 2020 presidential race: “I had no intention of running for president again, and—until I saw those folks coming out of the fields in Virginia carrying torches and carrying Nazi banners and literally singing the same vile rhyme that they used in Germany in the early ’20s or ’30s. …
“And then, when the gentleman you mentioned (Trump) was asked what he thought—and a young woman was killed, a protester—and he asked—was asked what he thought, he said, ‘There are very good people on both sides.’ And that’s when I decided I wasn’t going to be quiet any longer.”
In fact, two CNN hosts, Jake Tapper and Michael Smerconish, have admitted that the Trump-defended-white-supremacists-by-saying-there-were-very-fine-people-on-both-sides narrative is wrong. Tapper, in August 2020, three years after the events in Charlottesville, tweeted, “So (Trump is) not saying that the neo-Nazis and white supremacists are very fine people, but he is saying people protesting alongside those neo-Nazi and white supremacists are very fine people.”