Regime fact-checkers at Snopes.com have issued a rare positive clarification for former president Donald Trump.
In a fact-check released on Thursday, Snopes rated as “false” the persistent claim that Trump said the marchers at the infamous Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville were “very fine people.”
The usually anti-Trump website explains that Trump’s remark was actually directed towards peaceful protestors who were in Charlottesville to protest the removal of Robert E. Lee’s statute.
“In a news conference after the rally protesting the planned removal of a Confederate statue, Trump did say there were ‘very fine people on both sides,’ referring to the protesters and the counterprotesters,” Snopes explains.
“He said in the same statement he wasn’t talking about neo-Nazis and white nationalists, who he said should be ‘condemned totally.’”
Snopes notes that Trump’s remark was seized upon and twisted from the moment he made it, at a press conference on 15 August 2017.
“This claim spread like wildfire, with then-presidential candidate Joe Biden making Trump’s comments on Charlottesville a cornerstone of his campaign.”
Chuck Schumer mangled the slur in a speech on the floor of the Senate this year, calling for universal condemnation” of President Trump after he apparently criticized “dual loyalties” to America and Israel. Schumer also criticized Trump for having dinner with Nick Fuentes at Mar-a-Lago, in 2022. Fuentes was apparently brought to the dinner unannounced by Kanye West. President Trump later said he had no idea who Fuentes was prior to the dinner.
The fact-check notes that “Trump’s supporters have consistently claimed that he actually condemned the neo-Nazis and white supremacists at the rally.”
The precise reason for the issuing of this fact-check now, nearly seven years later, is unclear.
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