Joe Biden falsely said that President Trump has never condemned white supremacy.
“You see these white supremacists coming out from under the rocks. He’s yet once to condemn white supremacy, the neo-Nazis. He hasn’t condemned the darn thing. He has given them oxygen,” the former vice president said in an interview on This Week that aired Sunday.
Trump long faced criticism for saying that there were “very fine people on both sides” of the “Unite the Right” rally and counterprotest in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017 that drew white nationalists and resulted in the death of a young counterprotester, which some thought was a failure by Trump to condemn white supremacy.
“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,” Trump said in the same 2017 press conference when he made the “very fine people” remark.
In another statement following the Charlottesville protests, Trump said, “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.”
Trump explicitly condemned white supremacy following the August 2019 shooting in El Paso, Texas, in which the perpetrator left an anti-immigrant manifesto on an online message board.
“In one voice our nation must condemn racism, bigotry and white supremacy,” Trump said. “These sinister ideologies must be defeated.”
On the one-year anniversary of the Charlottesville attacks, Trump tweeted, “I condemn all types of racism and acts of violence.”
The riots in Charlottesville a year ago resulted in senseless death and division. We must come together as a nation. I condemn all types of racism and acts of violence. Peace to ALL Americans!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 11, 2018
