Fact Check: Dems Use 'Very Fine People' Hoax Against Trump in Impeachment Trial
In their effort to convict former President Donald Trump in his second impeachment trial, Democrats have decided that cherry-picking comments from his Jan. 6 speech does not provide enough evidence.
They have now ventured over five years into the past to find remarks from Trump that they can take out of context and attempt to use against him to prove he “incited an insurrection.”
Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, the lead House impeachment manager, showed footage on Thursday dating back as far as 2015 “to argue that [Trump] had encouraged his supporters to be violent.”
The Democrat showed video of the president’s news conference after the 2017 riot in Charlottesville, Virginia, and claimed he condoned violence by saying there were “very fine people on both sides.”
This phrase has been a favorite target of leftists ever since Trump used it. However, they consistently leave out the rest of the quote, which Raskin did again Thursday.
Trump made it clear he wasn’t speaking about the violent extremists who were involved.
“I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally,” the president said at the time.
This latest attack comes on the heels of Raskin attacking Trump’s use of the phrase “fight like hell,” despite the fact that Raskin had used the phrase himself in response to the nomination of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
At this point, Raskin should have no credibility in the impeachment trial. This is the second time this week that he has selectively edited past events to try and incriminate Trump.
He also incorrectly said that Charlottesville was in North Carolina. It was probably just an honest mistake, but it does not help his already fading trustworthiness.
Impeachment manager exhibit incorrectly identifies Charlottesville, VA, as Charlottesville, NC pic.twitter.com/hXTaZ4bkhF
— Evie Fordham (@eviefordham) February 11, 2021
This isn’t the first time Democrats have repeated the “very fine people” hoax to try to hurt Trump. President Joe Biden used it on the campaign trail last year.
You’re a liar. Will @TwitterSupport label this misinformation?
— Jessica O’Donnell (@heckyessica) August 12, 2020
It is also not the first time that the liberal media have accused Trump of refusing to condemn practices that he did condemn. In October, Savannah Guthrie of NBC News asked Trump to denounce white supremacy.
He promptly did so, as he had done multiple times before this one. Nonetheless, Guthrie accused him of trying to “dodge” the question and being “hesitant” to answer.
The establishment media have been in the business of mischaracterizing Trump’s words for more than four years. Now, they are attempting to use their own false claims about Trump as evidence that he encouraged violence.
Raskin claimed that Trump’s rhetoric at Charlottesville and in other instances “conditioned his supporters to participate” in the Jan. 6 Capitol incursion.
That is some extreme gaslighting right there.
First, the Democrats falsely say Trump has refused to condemn violence and white supremacy, even though he has condemned both of those practices multiple times.
After that, they use their own contrived notion about Trump to argue that he encouraged a completely separate event on Jan. 6. Not only is that a leap, but it is also based on an assumption about Trump that is not true.
It is pretty clear that the Democrats have come up short of evidence against the former president. That is probably why Republicans like South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham are already expecting an acquittal.
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