During a recent CNN debate, President Joe Biden said he decided to run for president again after seeing the Charlottesville rally in 2017. He remembered seeing people with swastikas and chanting anti-Semitic slogans, which reminded him of Nazi Germany, where a young woman died. Biden criticized former President Donald Trump for calling some rally-goers “fine people.”
This assertion has been a focal point of contention between critics and supporters of Trump. Critics have long argued that Trump equated neo-Nazis and white supremacists with counterprotesters, while conservatives have pointed to the transcript where Trump explicitly condemned the neo-Nazis and white supremacists while acknowledging that there were “fine people” on both sides of the debate.
Recently, the fact-checking website Snopes acknowledged that Trump did not directly refer to neo-Nazis as “very fine people” during his press conference following the Charlottesville rally. This acknowledgment challenges Biden’s repeated assertion about Trump’s remarks, suggesting that the narrative Biden referenced may not align with the factual record.
Biden and Trump During CNN Debate
During the debate, Trump responded to Biden’s claim by asserting that the Charlottesville story had been thoroughly debunked by numerous credible sources. He accused Biden of using the Charlottesville incident as a pretext for launching his presidential campaign, dismissing Biden’s narrative as “nonsense.”
Biden, however, stood by his account, insisting that his decision to run was indeed influenced by the events in Charlottesville. Despite Trump’s counterclaims and the acknowledgment by fact-checkers, Biden maintained that the facts surrounding Trump’s response to the rally remain as he originally described them.
The debate over Trump’s remarks following the Charlottesville rally continues to be a point of contention in political discourse, illustrating broader debates about historical accuracy, political rhetoric, and the impact of presidential statements on public perception and policy.
