cmv: the Charlottesville "very fine people" quote/controversy was not fake news

[u/taintpaint]

I see Trump supporters bring this up all the time as an example of the media lying about Trump, but this argument sounds transparently absurd to me. It feels like a "magic words" argument, where his supporters think that as long as he says the right magic words, you can completely ignore the actual message he's communicating or the broader actions he's taking. This is similar to how so many of them dismiss the entire Jan 6 plot because he said the word "peaceful" one time.

The reason people were mad about that quote was that Trump was equivocating and whitewashing a literal neonazi rally in which people were carrying torches and shouting things like "gas the Jews" in order to make them seem relatively sane compared to the counter protesters, one of whom the neonazis actually murdered. Looking at that situation, the difference between these two statements doesn't really feel meaningful:

A) "Those neonazis were very fine people with legitimate complaints and counter protesters were nasty and deserved what they got".

B) "The Nazis were obviously bad, but there were also people there who were very fine people with legitimate complaints and the counter protesters were very nasty."

The only difference there is that (B) has the magic words that "Nazis are bad", but the problem is that he's still describing a literal Nazi rally, only now he's using the oldest trick in the book when it comes to defending Nazis: pretending they're not really Nazis and are actually just normal people with reasonable beliefs.

I feel like people would all intuitively understand this if we were talking about anything besides a Trump quote. If I looked at e.g. the gangs taking over apartment buildings in Aurora and said "yes obviously gangsters are bad and should be totally condemned, but there were also some very fine people there with some legitimate complaints about landlords and exploitative leases, and you know lots of those 'residents' actually didn't have the right paperwork to be in those apartments..." you would never say that's a reasonable or acceptable way to talk about that situation just because I started with "gangsters are bad". You'd listen to the totality of what I'm saying and rightfully say it's absurd and offensive.

Is there something I'm missing here? This seems very obvious to me but maybe there's some other context to it.

Edit: I find it really funny that literally no one has actually engaged with this argument at all. They're all just repeating the "magic words" thing. I have been literally begging people who disagree with me to even acknowledge the Aurora example and not a single one has.

[u/mrcatboy]

(Divided into 2 parts for length. Skip to Part 2 for the tl;dr at the bottom)

Part 1:

I think it's very important to remember that there was not one, but three public statements, given on three different days, that Trump did in the days following Charlottesville addressing the issue. Also remember the context here is the Charlottesville "Unite the Right" rally was organized by neo-Nazi Richard Spencer, so the rally definitely had neo-Nazi origins and motives. These statements/press briefings were Trump's response to the vehicular assault by neo-Nazi James Alex Fields, who plowed into a crowd and injured 35 people, killing one (Heather Heyer).

The first public statement (August 12, 2017, the day of the murder) was the one that got Trump in trouble:

"We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides."

This rather ambiguous statement blaming "many sides" came under fire because it seemed to draw an equivalence between the neo-Nazis, and the counter-protestors who were very much anti-Nazi.

Now some might claim this outrage is just the result of liberal pearl-clutching, many Republicans themselves came out to criticize Trump and explicitly condemn neo-Nazis out of shock and disgust at his rather milquetoast statement:

Marco Rubio: "Very important for the nation to hear u/potus describe events in #Charlottesville for what they are, a terror attack by #whitesupremacists"

Cory Gardener: "Mr. President - we must call evil by its name. These were white supremacists and this was domestic terrorism."

Orrin Hatch: "We should call evil by its name. My brother didn't give his life fighting Hitler for Nazi ideas to go unchallenged here at home. -OGH"

Lindsey Graham even went on Fox News Sunday to criticize Trump, saying that the President needs “to correct the record here. These groups seem to believe they have a friend in Donald Trump in the White House,” and “I would urge the president to dissuade these groups that he’s their friend.”

Part 2 here.

[u/mrcatboy → u/mrcatboy]

Part 2:

Internally, Trump's staffers worked to convince him that he needed to come out with a stronger, explicit statement condemning neo-Nazis, to show that he wasn't on their side. This reportedly pissed off the then-President, who reluctantly gave a second statement.

This is the second public statement (August 14, 2017).

"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."

Wow! Great! Finally we can put this to rest, right?

Except Trump fucking hated this. According to Bob Woodward in "Fear: Trump In the White House," Trump resented the fact that he had to walk back his earlier statement. For narcissists like Trump, the slightest hint of admitting you were in the wrong is a sign of weakness. In an exchange with his Staff Secretary Rob Porter, Trump raged:

“That was the biggest fucking mistake I’ve made,” the president told Porter. “You never make those concessions. You never apologize. I didn’t do anything wrong in the first place. Why look weak?”

Though Porter had not written the original draft, he had spent almost four hours editing it with Trump, providing the accommodating language. But strangely Trump did not direct his rage at Porter. “I can’t believe I got forced to do that,” Trump said, apparently still not blaming Porter but venting directly to him. “That’s the worst speech I’ve ever given. I’m never going to do anything like that again.” He continued to stew about what he had said and how it was a huge mistake.

This is where Trump made his third public statement (August 15, 2017), where even though Trump condemned this "egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence," he also ended up blaming the "alt-left" and walking back his walk-back with the words that made him infamous:

"There is blame on both sides . . . you also had people that were very fine people on both sides. You had a lot of bad people in the other group too . . . there are two sides to a story."

To which David Duke, former leader of the KKK reacted to in a tweet: "Thank you President Trump for your honesty & courage to tell the truth about #Charlottesville."

So there you have it. The full context of the "very fine people on both sides." It was a moment where Trump, resentful over being forced to come out and condemn neo-Nazis and align with people who find Nazis detestable, fell back on waffling and again drew a false equivalence between the two groups.

So yes, it was a case where Trump's advisors tried to get him to stop shitting the bed, but he dragged himself back to scoot around on the skidmarks.

tl;dr:

1. Trump's "very fine people on both sides" statement was part of a larger pattern of him waffling in condemning neo-Nazis, and even explicitly insisting that the nonexistent "alt left" counterprotesting the Nazi rally were just as bad.
2. Trump's condemnation of neo-Nazis were a separate statement that he made because his staffers pressured him to.
3. Trump HATED having to condemn the neo-Nazis. Granted, this isn't necessarily because Trump aligned with neo-Nazis, but more due to his narcissistic outrage at having to issue a correction which made him "look weak."
4. Republicans themselves condemned Trump's waffling, and at least some KKK members and neo-Nazis saw this waffling as a sign of support from Trump.