In 2017, Donald Trump was only months into his presidency. The nation was overwhelmed by months of nonstop anti-Trump news coverage until August cut the supply short.
Nothing happens in Washington in August with Congress out of session. It was also a weekend, and news headlines were scarce. The mainstream media makes money from headlines and clicks. Reporters thrive on the adrenaline of Twitter controversies, feeding their liberal audiences who consider themselves news junkies needing the dopamine that Trump provides. On that weekend, all hell broke loose.
The Charlottesville city council was considering removing a statue of Robert E. Lee. In response, activists organized a rally to prevent its removal, with many of these organizers being white nationalists.
Trump responded to the rally by making a statement condemning Nazis. A day later, he gave a speech in New York about transportation infrastructure that lasted for minutes, followed by a Q&A with reporters. Despite having condemned the Nazis present at the rally the previous day, reporters asked him about it again. Once more, he reiterated, “we condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence. It has no place in America.”
Nobody reported this. Trump also said the line that is still held against him: “You also had people that were very fine people on both sides.” It was a terrible line.
Either way, the line Trump used was bad. Combined with the news boredom of an August weekend, America exploded, and it was blown out of proportion, entirely ignoring that Trump had condemned the Nazis. As the story has been sold to Americans since then, Trump called Nazis “very fine people”—which he didn’t.
Seven years later, even Snopes just admitted that Trump never did that:
In a news conference after the rally protesting the planned removal of a Confederate statue, Trump did say there were “very fine people on both sides,” referring to the protesters and the counter protesters. He said in the same statement he wasn’t talking about neo-Nazis and white nationalists, who he said should be “condemned totally.”
Joe Biden has said many times that he decided to run for president after seeing Trump’s speech – in reality, he decided to run for president as early as 1987!
Biden’s justification for why he wanted to replace Trump was based on a lie, but it still made for a good campaign line on Morning Joe that he volunteered his services only because of Trump’s “very fine people on both sides” line.
As with most of Biden’s non-stop public preening, he lied to make himself look like the noble white knight. As with most of Biden’s swaggering, fabulist exaggerations and bromides, the press fueled his lie and let him get away with it.
Why? You know, Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Flash forward seven years later, Nazis held a rally in D.C. This time, the Nazis came from the left. Unite The Right Rally protesters chanted, “Jew won’t replace us.” D.C. protesters chanted “jihad” and praised Hamas and Hezbollah, organizations that seek to kill Jews. They also chanted, “From D.C. to Palestine, we are the red line.” They held signs referencing the intifada, which involved terrorist activities and suicide bombings targeting Israeli Jews in the 2000s. The Charlottesville protesters wanted to protect the statue of a general who betrayed America and fired at the U.S. Army. The D.C. protesters vandalized the statue of George Washington, the man who led the war that founded America and led our Army.
The leftist extremists are more dangerous. The Unite the Right rally was held in a small city. The anti-Israel protesters were at the nation’s capital, vandalizing it before the eyes of the world’s diplomats. They protested in front of the White House. The Secret Service and federal marshals stood by as they broke the law before their eyes — Were they ordered not to interfere?
It gets worse. The Unite The Right Rally was defending an enemy of the United States that no longer exists. The D.C. protesters were promoting terrorist organizations, which are current enemies of the United States. No right-wing crazy can be recruited by or operate as a lone wolf for the Confederacy, which no longer exists. But you can bet your bottom dollar that Hamas and Hezbollah would love to recruit the left-wing crazies.
Biden had a chance to rise to the moment, but he blew it because he’s scared of his extreme left flank that hates Jews and America. He cares more about Michigan’s electoral votes and the votes of antisemites and extremists in Philadelphia and other large U.S. cities, where antisemites hide in plain sight.
The second question Trump was asked seven years ago was, “Why did you wait so long to denounce neo-Nazis?” Biden hasn’t made any statement about the D.C. rally. Reporters haven’t asked him about it either. His press secretary has—which is worse than silence. The White House’s deputy spokesperson said:
President Biden has always been clear that every American has the right to peacefully express their views. But he has also always been clear that antisemitism, violent rhetoric, and endorsing murderous terrorist organizations like Hamas is repugnant, dangerous, and against everything we stand for as a country.
Instead, just as Trump said there were good people on both sides, Biden is blaming both sides in the Middle East for perpetuating the war. It’s no different. But unlike Trump, he gets a pass.
Biden claims he ran for President because he was disgusted by how Trump responded to Charlottesville. He lied, and the press keeps allowing him to get away with that lie.
Note: the opinions expressed herein are those of Chuck Warren only and not his co-host Sam Stone or Breaking Battlegrounds’ staff.
