As Democrats entered into the second full day of tedious and belabored impeachment arguments to claim that former president Donald Trump “incited” the violence at the US Capitol on Jan. 6, the long debunked canard of 2017 riots in Charlottesville, Va., surfaced several times.
President Joe Biden and others have drawn harsh criticism for promoting a false narrative, claiming that white supremacists were “coming out of the fields” in the largely urban area around the University of Virginia‘s landmark Rotunda.
Others have repeatedly taken out of context Trump’s comments regarding “very fine people on both sides” of the conflict, deceptively suggesting it was a dog-whistle show of support for white-supremacist groups when, in fact, Trump had just finished condemning violent extremists.
Lead impeachment manager Jamie Raskin, D-Md., used a heavily spliced montage to do both, misleadingly distorting the Charlottesville violence and Trump’s reaction to it, as Breitbart reported.
Rankin claimed “the neo-Nazis, the Klansmen and Proud Boys invaded the city—the great city of Charlottesville, and killed Heather Heyer.”
However, the groups had been given a permit to protest, and despite the efforts of leftist government officials to prevent the organized “Unite the Right” rally against the illegal removal of two Confederate statues, courts had sided with the protesters.
Radical leftist groups such as Antifa, who did not have a permit, played a large role in instigating the violence, and police were directed by officials including then-Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a stooge of the Clintons, to stand down and allow the fighting to escalate in order to speed along the declaration of an unlawful assembly.
While Democrats have long shown that the specific details about the Charlottesville riots were irrelevant to the bigger picture of the “Orange Man = Racist” narrative, Raskin’s video revealed just how immaterial the actual facts were—by using the wrong state.
Rather than correctly identify the state of the “great” city—home to Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello and the University of Virginia—the video incorrectly claimed that it was in North Carolina.
Impeachment manager exhibit incorrectly identifies Charlottesville, VA, as Charlottesville, NC pic.twitter.com/hXTaZ4bkhF
— Evie Fordham (@eviefordham) February 11, 2021
To make matters worse, Rep. Diana DeGette later brought up Charlottesville again in the proceedings, this time adding yet another state.
“Think back to August 2017, when a young woman was murdered during a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, West Virginia,” DeGette said.
“Her daughter’s murderer, he was held to account,” she continued. “But our nation did not impose any accountability on a president who at the time said that there were very fine people on both sides.”
Trump’s attorneys were roundly criticized during the opening arguments on Tuesday for seeming to have a less cohesive presentation than Democrats. That prompted Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., to flip his vote in support of the proceedings.
Others, like staunch Trump ally Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, were obliged to justify their vote against it in the face of what mainstream media deemed undeniable evidence of guilt.
It remains unclear whether the unforced errors from the House Democrats’ JV team will likewise result in any Democrats flipping their votes to support Trump.
However, given the disrespect shown to his state, Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., may face additional pressure from his constituents to reject the false narratives.
