RCP: News anchors and pundits have repeated lies about Donald Trump and race so often that some of these narratives seem true, even to Americans who embrace the fruits of the president’s policies. The most pernicious and pervasive of these lies is the “Charlottesville Hoax,” the fake-news fabrication that he described the neo-Nazis who rallied in Charlottesville, Va., in August 2017 as “fine people.”
Just last week I exposed this falsehood, yet again, when CNN contributor Keith Boykin falsely stated, “When violent people were marching with tiki torches in Charlottesville, the president said they were ‘very fine people.’” When I objected and detailed that Trump’s “fine people on both sides” observation clearly related to those on both sides of the Confederate monument debate, and specifically excluded the violent supremacists, anchor Erin Burnett interjected, “He [Trump] didn’t say it was on the monument debate at all. No, they didn’t even try to use that defense. It’s a good one, but no one’s even tried to use it, so you just used it now.”
My colleagues seem prepared to dispute our own network’s correct contemporaneous reporting and the very clear transcripts of the now-infamous Trump Tower presser on the tragic events of Charlottesville. Here are the unambiguous actual words of President Trump:
“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 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.”
After another question at that press conference, Trump became even more explicit:
“I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and white nationalists because they should be condemned totally.”
As a man charged with publicly explaining Donald Trump’s often meandering and colloquial vernacular in highly adversarial TV settings, I appreciate more than most the sometimes-murky nature of his off-script commentaries. But these Charlottesville statements leave little room for interpretation. For any honest person, therefore, to conclude that the president somehow praised the very people he actually derided, reveals a blatant and blinding level of bias. more
Can we have a moment of silence for the MSM?
They are in mourning right now with the Mueller report.
Show some damn respect won’t ya!
SOMEBODY NEEDS TO COME OUT WITH MAGA HELMETS ASAP!!
Let’s be clear here.
Keith Boykin (sounds like a queer name to me) objected to fine people on both sides, he was only objecting to the people on the right being called fine people. The people on the right were the ones exercizing their constitutional, legal rights.
He didn’t object to the people on the left, the communists who were there committing assault and battery against the people who were holding a legal rally.
Communists murdered TEN times as many people as the nazis during the twentieth century. The numbers are readily available to anyone who wants to look it up.
I’m tired of debating with these people. Would someone on tv please tell them that their ideology murdered ten times more people than the nazis and were committing assault as well?
And then tell them to get fucked and go straight to hell where they belong.
Stop being pussies when debating these scumbags.
Thank you for posting this MJA! I heard what President Trump said, when he said it – and it has been driving me crazy that the MSM lets the lie slip by.
And I agreed wholeheartedly with Trump’s statement, btw.
Like we needed proof?
@Aunt Liz – RIGHT ON! thanks @MJA.
Sorry but THAT whole THING was a false flag of ‘some’ type…here THEY are PUSHING it now two years later.
Who here knows that State TROOPERS died that day?
Police told to stand off?
Also, and I will leave with this, why was that guy in lock up for so long before he was found GUILTY? How many lucid pics did we see of HIM?
MAGA2016
KAG2020
Ask the human beings who were murdered by a Trump supporter what he said?
Larry, like that fag they beat up in New York — what was his name? Smellum? Smegma? Who cares?
It never happened.
Larry’s been drinking the dog urine again…
@Larry – I know I entertain you and I should not, BUT your grammar is way off.
How can we ask ‘someone ANYTHING that is dead’…already?
Stop being a DH and read and write ENGLISH. What grade did you graduate from?
Protagonistic is one thing, being an asshole is another.
GoBGJG
Larry – you’ll have to wait to ask them until they show up at the voting booth.