Thanks to an unusually naive post from fact-checking site Snopes, gaslighting chief Donald Trump is trying to convince the public that his response to the 2017 murder of Heather Heyer in Charlottesville, Virginia, was not morally bankrupt.
Heyer was among a crowd of left-wing counterprotesters opposing the Unite the Right rally, which was protesting the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. James Alex Fields, who had a fascination with Hitler and Nazism, drove his car into the counterprotesters, injuring more than 30 people and killing Heyer. Trump cites Snopes to say that President Joe Biden and anyone with common sense are misinterpreting Trump’s infamous statement that there were “very fine people on both sides” during the day’s clashes.
“What about the alt-left that came charging, as you say, at the alt-right? Do they have any semblance of guilt?
Apparently, it matters to Trump that he has convinced people that his response to the racist and deadly violence in Charlottesville was not beneath the office of the presidency. And it matters equally to Biden that we remember not only Trump’s terrible response to date, but also that it characterizes who he was as president and who he would be if elected again.
During their June 27 CNN debate, Biden, as he has repeatedly during his campaign, cited Trump’s response to Charlottesville as the reason he decided to run for the 2020 Democratic nomination and engage in what he called “a battle for the soul of America.”
Trump, apparently referring to Snopes, responded that Biden “made up the Charlottesville story, and you’ll see it debunked everywhere. Every anchor has it — every reasonable anchor has debunked it. And the other day it came out and it was completely debunked. It’s a nonsense story. He knows it. And he didn’t run because of Charlottesville. He used that as an excuse to run away.”
Snopes argues that because Trump later in his statement explicitly condemned neo-Nazis and white supremacists, it is false to say that he was classifying them as “good people.” One can imagine Snopes summarizing Mark Antony’s “Friends, Romans, Countrymen” speech as “Aide calls Caesar’s murderers ‘honorable men.’”
While it’s the job of the fact-checker to attend to the minutiae, it’s the job of the truth-teller to include the larger context. Trump’s comments came three days after Heyer’s murder; in a foreshadowing of January. By January 6, 2021, he was being criticized for a slow and insufficiently outraged response. The context is also that Trump, as we’ve long known, defines “really good people” as those who like him and really bad people as those who don’t.
Was there anyone on Heyer’s side that fateful day who didn’t test Trump? Probably not. Was there anyone on the Unite the Right side, on Robert E. Lee’s side, who wouldn’t support Trump? That’s equally doubtful. In fact, that rally brought together people who would illegally fight for his retention of power on January 1st. December 6, 2021. So it made sense that Trump, who is the embodiment of amorality, would ask a reporter that same day, “What about the alt-left that came charging, as you say, at the alt-right?” Do they have any semblance of culpability?
And also say: “You had a group on one side that was bad, and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent. And nobody wants to say that, but I’m going to say it right now. “There was a group on the other side that came running in, without a permit, and they were very, very violent.”
Back to Snopes, yes, Trump did cross the hurdle of saying Nazis were bad: “I’ve condemned neo-Nazis. I’ve condemned many different groups. But believe me, not all of these people were neo-Nazis. Not all of these people were white supremacists at all.” And then he said, “These people were also there because they wanted to protest the destruction of a statue, the statue of Robert E. Lee.”
It should be taken as a truth of political protest that you cannot control everyone who joins your protest. If the purpose of your protest is noble and people can cause gloms there, then there is an argument that the bad behavior of these interlopers should not be attributed to you. However, the “Unite the Right” rally was organized, in part, by Richard Spencer, a white nationalist who coined the term “alt-right,” spread his noxious white nationalist gospel on college campuses, and pretended to give a Nazi-style “Hail Trump!” cheer at a conference. Apparently, the “good people” innocently followed along.
“You had a group on one side that was bad, and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent. And nobody wants to say that, but I’m going to say it right now. “There was a group on the other side that came running in, without a permit, and they were very, very violent.”
Given their history as looming emblems of white Southern power over disenfranchised black people after Reconstruction, I think Confederate monuments and the lobbying for them are problematic in almost every context. But even if I could conceive of “fine people” marching for Lee in 2017, I couldn’t conceive of them aligning themselves with an event sponsored by Spencer. Joining a rally that a white nationalist helped organize is proof enough that the participants are not “fine people.”
Trump has yet to announce his vice presidential pick, but by suggesting that his Charlottesville remarks were not an abject failure, he is undermining the case for one of the candidates he is supposedly considering. At the time, Trump’s remarks about “good people on both sides” prompted Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., to say, “What we want to see from our president is clarity and moral authority and for moral authority to be compromised.”
Scott told Fox News last week that after he decried Trump’s refusal to effectively distinguish right from wrong, Trump “invited me to the Oval Office to talk about race relations in America.” He said Trump listened and said, “Help me help those I’ve offended.” Scott said, “It was the Charlottesville incident that made our relationship what it is today.”
That might be as good a reason as any to oppose Scott for vice president. He wouldn’t be able to tell the story of his closeness to Trump without a moment that illustrates why Trump should never be president again.