Several left-leaning news outlets on Thursday deceptively omitted President Donald Trump’s condemnation of Neo-Nazis and white nationalists who showed up at a “Unite the Right” protest in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017.
Breitbart Senior Editor-at-Large Joel Pollak confronted Biden in Iowa on Thursday and said, “Mr. Vice President, are you aware that you’re misquoting Donald Trump in Charlottesville? He never called Neo-Nazis very fine people.”
Biden replied, “No, he called all those folks who walked out of that — they were Neo-Nazis shouting hate, their veins bulging.”
“But he said specifically that he was condemning them,” Pollak insisted.
“No, he did not. He said — let’s get this straight — he said there were very fine people in both groups. They were chanting antisemitic slogans, carrying flags,” Biden said, before storming away.
Indeed, President Trump held a press conference after violence broke out in Charlottesville, leaving one dead. “We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred” – “from all sides,” President Trump said.
But President Trump went on to specifically condemn Neo-Nazis and white nationalists (emphasis added):
I do think there is blame – yes, I think there is blame on both sides. You look at, you look at both sides. I think there’s blame on both sides, and I have no doubt about it, and you don’t have any doubt about it either. And, and, and, and if you reported it accurately, you would say.
…
Excuse me, they didn’t put themselves down as neo-Nazis, and you had some very bad people in that group. But you also had people that were very fine people on both sides. You had people in that group – excuse me, excuse me. I saw the same pictures as you did. You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down, of to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name.
…
It’s fine, you’re changing history, you’re changing culture, and you had people – and I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally – but you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists, okay? And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly. Now, in the other group also, you had some fine people, but you also had troublemakers and you see them come with the black outfits and with the helmets and with the baseball bats – you had a lot of bad people in the other group too.
Breitbart News has reported, the “‘very fine people’ comment referred to non-violent demonstrators on both the left and right. During the same press conference, the president also condemned the murder of Heather Heyer, describing it as an act of ‘terrorism’ and ‘murder.’”
However, while reporting on the Pollak-Biden confrontation, several mainstream media outlets failed to mention President Trump’s condemnation of Neo-Nazis and white nationalists. Namely:
CNN anchor Jake Tapper went so far as to clearly state that President Trump is “not saying that the Neo-Nazis and white supremacists are very fine people.”
Even CNN’s Jake Tapper admits that President Donald Trump condemned neo-Nazis and white supremacists: “He’s not saying that the neo-Nazis and white supremacists are very fine people” pic.twitter.com/2hy1rQp8nP
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) April 26, 2019
Jerome Hudson is Breitbart News Entertainment Editor and author of the forthcoming book 50 Things They Don’t Want You to Know, from HarperCollins. Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter @jeromeehudson.
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