I would have never thought Snopes would be the one to drop an atomic bomb on liberal America like this—but here we are. One of the popular liberal myths about Donald Trump is the ‘both sides’ event after Charlottesville, where the media and Democrats for years have alleged Donald Trump was referring to the neo-Nazis that assembled during that Unite the Right rally, which left dozens injured and a woman dead after one white supremacist drove his car through a crowd of counter-protesters.
It's the event that reportedly spurred Joe Biden to run for president. There is no doubt that Biden’s debate team was prepping him to sneak this attack line in the upcoming debates, and now they can’t. We’ll see who is truly prepared because Snopes shredded this liberal talking point, rating it “false.” We’ve known for years it was, as have you, but it’s now official: the ‘very fine people on both sides’ myth about Trump is dead (via Fox News) [emphasis mine]:
The left-leaning fact-checking website Snopes acknowledged Saturday that former President Trump never called neo-Nazis "very fine people" during his press conference following the Charlottesville "Unite the Right" rally in 2017.
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"While Trump did say that there were ‘very fine people on both sides,’ he also specifically noted that he was not talking about neo-Nazis and White supremacists and said they should be 'condemned totally.' Therefore, we have rated this claim 'False,'" Snopes wrote.
The Snopes fact check now aligns with years of arguments from Trump's camp, who long stated, backed by transcript and video, that his comments were taken out of context. The fact-checker notes that the false claim about Trump's comments "spread like wildfire" on the left, eventually being cited as a cornerstone of Biden's election campaign.
I’m curious how Snopes readers reacted to this article; they probably accused the outlet of treason. The first myth busted about Trump related to the former president referring to illegal aliens as rapists. That line got shredded by a guest writer, Alberto Martinez, in Salon, who was a self-identified Bernie Sanders supporter and a Latino who penned an article begging the media to stop trashing Trump over a lie in 2015.
First, the Trump line that caused the media to go insane at the time:
“When do we beat Mexico at the border? They’re laughing at us, at our stupidity. [...] When Mexico sends its people they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you; they’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists, and some, I assume, are good people. But I speak to border guards and they tell us what we’re getting.”
And then Martinez' take:
You might well dislike Trump’s words. I did. But let’s not make it worse. He did not say that all Mexicans are rapists. Yet that’s what many commentators did. For example, Politico misquoted Trump by omitting his phrase about “good people.” They said he was “demonizing Mexicans as rapists.” They argued that Mexicans do not really commit more rapes in the U.S. than whites. But that’s not what Trump claimed.
Compare such words with Trump’s words. Which is worse? Writers excerpted the phrase: “they’re rapists,” as if it were about all Mexican unauthorized immigrants, or worse, about all Mexican immigrants, or even worst, about all Mexicans. But that’s not what he said. That’s not what he meant. It was just a remark about some of the criminals crossing the border.
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Trump was discussing crimes committed by unauthorized immigrants. Is it true that some people who illegally cross the border from Mexico are good? Yes. Is it true that some others commit crimes? Yes. Is that a problem? People disagree. Some conjecture that unauthorized immigrants don’t commit more crimes than U.S. citizens. But crimes by unauthorized immigrants, even murders, would not have happened if those individuals had not entered the U.S.
He then went on to detail the number of criminal aliens that slip through into the United States, how these are preventable crimes, and how Trump’s rhetoric during that speech is more aligned with what’s already federal immigration law. It’s shocking how this piece slipped into Salon, a left-wing rag, but it’s a lengthy and brutal takedown of most liberal media takes when Trump said this during the 2016 cycle. Yet, like the Russian collusion hoax, it's probably going to take years for this to leave the system of unbalanced liberals.
If Biden drops this line, Trump should respond that even lefty fact-checkers have said it was a lie. The first showdown between Biden and Trump is set for June 27.