(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) A self-proclaimed leftist “fact-checker” site has delivered some harsh truths about then-President Donald Trump’s 2017 speech regarding the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Snopes acknowledged that Trump never called neo-Nazis and white supremacists “very fine people,” debunking a long-standing assertion by the Democratic Party and President Joe Biden.
“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 wrote in a fact-check published on Thursday.
“He said in the same statement he wasn’t talking about neo-Nazis and white nationalists, who he said should be ‘condemned totally,’” Snopes added, referring to Trump.
No, then-President Donald Trump did not call neo-Nazis and white supremacists "very fine people" in 2017. Speaking about a deadly protest in Charlottesville, Virginia, he said those groups should be "condemned totally." https://t.co/AHjw0mwl3i pic.twitter.com/TtCH1BzZja
— snopes.com (@snopes) June 20, 2024
It’s unclear why Snopes took seven years to correct the record.
Anderson Cooper just did an entire segment on the "right wing media selectively editing videos." He's just so concerned about disinformation.🤪
The middle video is one of the dozens of times that Anderson Cooper has spread the Fine People Hoax by selectively editing video. Fun… pic.twitter.com/uROOuptj1X
— MAZE (@mazemoore) June 22, 2024
As a candidate, Biden cited the false assertion that Trump referred to neo-Nazis as “very fine people” as a reason for running for president.
In his 2020 campaign announcement video, Biden falsely claimed, “The President of the United States assigned a moral equivalence between those spreading hate and those with the courage to stand against it. And in that moment, I knew the threat to this nation was unlike any I’d ever seen in my lifetime.”
Several conservatives reacted forcefully to the Snopes fact-check on Twitter, expressing their views on the belated correction:
Snopes took 7 years to debunk the “fine people” hoax but they were on this Babylon Bee joke within hours pic.twitter.com/bxmJDqC84w
— Joel Berry (@JoelWBerry) June 24, 2024
🚨Left-wing fact checker Snopes finally admits the truth about one of the most disgusting lies in American politics – the “Charlottesville Hoax” about President Trump.
Watch my 2019 @PragerU video debunking it since Joe Biden continues to spread this lie. pic.twitter.com/5i6wgP788P https://t.co/3abYNiM7dD
— Steve Cortes (@CortesSteve) June 23, 2024
FACT CHECK? Seriously? Snopes is finally starting to tell the truth about Trump. Are we living in an alternative simulation? The fact checkers universally claimed Trump praised Nazis in 2017 even though it was clear he never did… pic.twitter.com/vBxvljPH7t
— @amuse (@amuse) June 23, 2024
Kind of amazing that this would pop up now, from @snopes https://t.co/B2GB40ZIvG pic.twitter.com/6UQXUcNAVD
— Byron York (@ByronYork) June 23, 2024
Snopes finally admits 7 years later that Trump never praised neo-N*zis https://t.co/FEKlClGa9p
— Chaya Raichik (@ChayaRaichik10) June 24, 2024
