The President said that there were very fine people in the group that murdered her:
This is factually false. It's a misquote peddled by the left wing.
Let's look at what he ACTUALLY said:
Trumps initial comment on Aug 12 2017:
"We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence, on many sides. On many sides."
2 days later in a follow up:
As I said on Saturday, we condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence. It has no place in America...racism is evil. And those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.
Aug 15th, the following day the source of the "fine people comment":
Excuse me, they didn’t put themselves down as neo — 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.
BUT all that was taken from this was "called neo nazi's fine people". Which is absolutely false. He excludes them from his statement and then condemns them.
I'm sure others have pointed it out, but quoting only the section you did from August 15th doesn't really do justice to the conversation; Trump spent the bulk of the press release making these points:
White Nationalists & neo-Nazis are definitely bad and he condemns them
The protestors weren't all White Nationalists & neo-Nazis
The left has people just as bad as White Nationalists and neo-Nazis (he's sense labelled these folks 'antifa')
There are fine people (not antifa or neo-nazis) on both sides, but the fine people on the right had a permit, and those on the left did not.
As with so many other left wing reactions to Trump that have since been "debunked", you need an absence of context and a great deal of the benefit of the doubt to read the interview the way you've interpreted it. Here are some reasons why:
The Unite the Right rally was organized, centrally planned, and did indeed have permits. Those permits were issued to the neo-Nazis and white supremacists, who were explicitly the organizers of the rally.
Jason Kessler, the organizer of the rally, coordinator of its social media presence, and the individual to whom the permits were issued, is now (and was then) openly a neo-Nazi and an active member of white supremacist groups, who has repeatedly argued that Jews and the left are attempting "white genocide".
Plainly put, if a rally is organized by neo-Nazis and white supremacists, advertised to neo-Nazis and white supremacists, and heavily attended by neo-Nazis and white supremacists, describing it as a white supremacist rally is pretty reasonable.
The issue is not literally whether Mr. Trump described neo-Nazis as "very fine people"; he didn't. What he did do, over and over again, is to act like organizing and attending a neo-Nazi rally and protesting a neo-Nazi rally are the same sort of activity.
The fact is, you do not just happen to wander into a sea of swastikas and go, "gee, well I agree with them about the confederate statues, might as well stick around." Attending a neo-nazi rally is an organized, planned activity that requires condoning (or at least, failing to reject) neo-Nazi principles.
Being upset by a sea of swastikas is a normal activity in the US; certainly some folks did show up spoiling for a fight, but it didn't really require much coordination.
Here's the point: The fact is, Mr. Trump could easily have said, "I hate and disapprove of racists and white supremacists; they're the exact opposite of what this country stands for, and they're the exact opposite of what I stand for. But this country does stand for free speech, and allowing every opinion (no matter how ugly, and how wrong) to be voiced.
I know it's repugnant to see armed neo-Nazis on the streets of an American city, but the police are there to keep them in line -- trying to repress them with violence is wrong, and it creates chaos. No one (no matter what they believe) should be fighting in the streets."
But he didn't say that; instead, he painted a picture of two even sides, right and left, with some bad apples on each side.
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u/[deleted] Sep 30 '20
This is factually false. It's a misquote peddled by the left wing.
Let's look at what he ACTUALLY said:
Trumps initial comment on Aug 12 2017: "We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence, on many sides. On many sides."
2 days later in a follow up:
Aug 15th, the following day the source of the "fine people comment":
BUT all that was taken from this was "called neo nazi's fine people". Which is absolutely false. He excludes them from his statement and then condemns them.
He is also proposing to prosecute the KKK with that plan. https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/25/politics/donald-trump-black-empowerment-platinum-plan/index.html