Seven years after it first became apparent, Snopes.com, arguably the most well-known fact-checking website, has now established that President Donald Trump did not call neo-Nazis in Charlottesville in August 2017 “very fine people.”
The fabrication played a major role in Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory. He announced his candidacy in April 2019, citing President Trump’s description of neo-Nazis as “very good people” as motivation to run against the president.
In fact, Trump has denounced white racists and neo-Nazis and referred to peaceful protestors on both sides of the Confederate statue removal controversy as “really great individuals.”
Biden and the media persisted in using the so-called “very fine people” hoax despite numerous commenters publicly disproving it, most notably cartoonist-turned-pundit Scott Adams and conservative commentator Steve Cortes.
In August of 2019, Breitbart News questioned Biden at the Iowa State Fair, asking him to explain why he kept misquoting Trump. In a furious reply, Biden read out a prepared speech in which he claimed that Trump had called neo-Nazis “very beautiful people.”
On the national scene, two public debunkings of the fraud occurred: once during the 2020 vice presidential debate, and another time when Trump’s attorneys exposed the fake in full during his second impeachment trial.
Long after becoming president, Biden persisted in using the “very fine people” falsehood. However, Snopes.com has finally disproved the “fine people myth,” with the incumbent facing a challenging re-election campaign and mounting demand to stand down.
“On August 15, 2017, then-President Trump spoke to neo-Nazis who attended the Unite the Right demonstration in Charlottesville, Virginia, as “very fine people.” Snopes graded this allegation as “false” in a post dated June 20, 2024.
It states:
“We investigated these allegations and discovered that although Trump acknowledged that there were “very fine people on both sides,” referring to both the demonstrators and the counterprotesters, he also categorically denounced neo-Nazis and white nationalists, saying he was speaking only of those who were there to participate in the statue protest. Despite acknowledging the presence of “many great people on both sides,” Trump clarified that he was not referring to white nationalists and neo-Nazis, emphasizing their “condemnation utterly.” We have therefore classified this assertion as “false.”
In order to allow readers to make their own decisions, Snopes also provides a transcript of all of Trump’s comments, contextualized.
In an “editor’s note,” Snopes states that although Trump was incorrect to assert that there were “many wonderful individuals on both sides,” the fact check’s main goal was to ascertain whether or not he had given adulation to neo-Nazis. According to Snopes, “The goal of this fact check was to verify what Trump actually said, not to determine whether or not what he said was factual.”
Indeed, several peaceful, non-racist defenders of the Confederate statue were present at the Charlottesville demonstration, as the New York Times revealed at the time. The contemporaneous account by the Times, which is hardly a pro-Trump outlet, stated that although the neo-Nazis and white supremacists hijacked their cause, they were present in Charlottesville.
Why don't they ever play the full video?
How can this lie still be perpetuated to this day?
3 years later and people still believe the "very fine people" lie. pic.twitter.com/TNaNuVJ3qz
— ? Josh Lekach ? (@JoshLekach) September 30, 2020
In any case, the Snopes fact-check comes out a few days before Biden and Trump compete in their first 2024 presidential debate on CNN on June 27. Biden might encounter fresh resistance if he tries to pull off the “very wonderful people” farce once more.
