During the Democratic National Convention's (DNC) opening night, President Joe Biden repeated a debunked claim that former President Donald Trump called neo-Nazis and white nationalists "very fine people."
The claim stems from the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia which left one woman dead.
Biden has brought up the "very fine people" claim many times throughout his presidency, most recently during his infamous debate with Trump in late-June. Biden also cited the event as his reason to run for president in 2020.
The president once again referenced the debunked claim during his Monday night speech at the DNC and framed the November election as a "battle for the very soul of America."
"I ran for president of 2020 because of what I saw on Charlottesville in August of 2017," Biden said. "Extremists coming out of the woods, carrying torches, their veins bulging from their necks, carrying Nazi swastikas and chanting the same exact anti-Semitic bile that was heard in Germany in the early thirties. Neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and the Ku Klux Klan, so emboldened by a president then in the White House that they saw as an ally. They didn't even bother to wear their hoods."
Biden then misquoted Trump and claimed the former president said there were "very fine people on both sides," in reference to neo-Nazis and white supremacists.
"My God, that's what he said. That is what he said and what he meant," Biden claimed. President Joe Biden *ERUPTS* in Rage at DNC Speech, Spreads 'Very Fine People Hoax' to Stir Division
Joe Biden's DNC speech took a dark turn when the former presidential candidate dusted off the "very fine people" hoax — tying Trump to neo-Nazis and white supremacists that he… pic.twitter.com/hk7MUR4qmZ
— Kyle Becker (@kylenabecker) August 20, 2024
"That's when I realized, had to listen to the admonition of my dead son. I could not stay in the sidelines. So, I ran because I had no intention of running again," he continued. "I just lost part of my soul. But I ran with a deep conviction in America. I know and believe, and in America where honesty, dignity, decency, still matter."
During a press conference following the 2017 event, Trump did in fact say there were “very fine” people on both sides of the demonstration, though specifically noted he was not referring to neo-Nazis or white nationalists present.
“You had some very bad people in that group. But you also had people that were very fine people on both sides,” Trump said. “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?” Trump added.
