That Donald Trump referred to white supremacists as “very fine people” was one of the first major myths about his presidency that the mainstream media conjured up, and it’s a claim that’s been debunked a million times over since.
Anyone paying attention already got the memo on this, and thus, when someone by the likes of Barack Obama spreads this claim, we know for a fact it’s because they’re lying.
While speaking at a Kamala Harris rally, Obama fearmongered to the audience; "Maybe you're Muslim-American or Jewish-American and you are heartbroken and furious about the ongoing bloodshed in the Middle East and worried about the rise of antisemitism. Why would you place your faith in somebody who instituted a so-called Muslim ban? Who sat down for pleasantries with Holocaust deniers, who said that there were very fine people on both sides of a white supremacist rally?"
These comments came mere weeks after Obama wondered at a Harris rally how our politics got “so toxic and so divided, so bitter.”
As I noted in my book “Fact-Checking the Fact-Checkers,” the so-called fact-checkers have tried to turn the “very fine people” hoax into a reality. To quote in full; One form of unofficial fact-check that PolitiFact publishes are called “in context” articles that don’t have any rating attached, and read like “explainer” style articles on a topic.
In one such article titled “In Context: Donald Trump’s ‘very fine people on both sides’ remarks,” Editor in Chief Holan fails to correct the widespread lie that Donald Trump called white supremacists in Charlotteville, Virginia, “very fine people.” This same article would later be cited by a different PolitiFact writer to further spread the lie.
Holan’s article opens: “We wanted to look at Trump’s comments in their original context. Here is a transcript of the questions Trump answered that addressed the Charlottesville controversy in the days after it happened.”
Despite presenting the article as an “explainer,” Holan merely provides a full transcript of the exchange with no commentary on what exactly we’re supposed to glean from it. The only bolded words in the entire transcript are Trump saying, “Excuse me, excuse me. They didn’t put themselves—and you had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides,” but the words providing the clarifying context, that Trump was not talking about white supremacists with that comment, aren’t bolded.
If presented honestly, the relevant part of the nearly three-thousand-word transcript would look like the following:
Reporter: The neo-Nazis started this. They showed up in Charlottesville to protest—
Reporter: George Washington and Robert E. Lee are not the same.
Trump: George Washington was a slave owner. Was George Washington a slave owner? So will George Washington now lose his status? Are we going to take down—excuse me, are we going to take down statues to George Washington? How about Thomas Jefferson? What do you think of Thomas Jefferson? You like him?
Reporter: I do love Thomas Jefferson.
Trump: Okay, good. Are we going to take down the statue? Because he was a major slave owner. Now, are we going to take down his statue? So you know what, 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.
Even in presenting the full transcript, Holan presented it in such a way to prevent the reader from stumbling upon the true context.
PolitiFact’s Sophie Austin and Louis Jacobson themselves spread the Charlottesville lie in a 2020 fact-check, writing: “As president in 2017, Trump said there were ‘very fine people, on both sides,’ in reference to neo-Nazis and counter-protesters in Charlottesville, VA.” Their source for the claim is the aforementioned “in context” article that proves the opposite to anyone who carefully reads it.
This was arguably the biggest lie about Trump during his first year in office (besides the Russia hysteria) and one that practically became canon in the media.
And the fact-checkers - and now one of America’s most divisive former presidents - have helped canonize it.
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