Al Green Perpetuates 'Fine People' Hoax in Hearing on White Nationalism
Rep. Al Green (D-TX) at a hearing on Wednesday perpetuated the hoax that President Trump called white nationalists at a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017 “very fine people.”
“Were there any nice people among the folks who were screaming, “blood and soil,” “Jews will not replace us,’ — were there any nice people among them?” Green asked the white nationalism expert witnesses.
Christian Picciolini, founder of the Free Radicals Project and a former white nationalist, responded:
Sir, in my job, I have to believe there were nice people there because it is my job to try to pull them out. However, I think the statement of ‘very fine people’ was a very dangerous one, because it did equivocate two things that were not equal.
Green and Picciolini were referring to Trump’s frequently misconstrued remarks.
Trump delivered a speech after a rally in Charlottesville that began as a protest against removing a Confederate statue was marred by white supremacist violence.
In his speech, he referred to some of the non-violent protestors as “very fine people” but specifically condemned white supremacists and called them “criminals and thugs.” Trump said:
You had some very bad people in that group. But you also had people that were very fine people on both sides. You had people in that group – excuse me, excuse me, I saw the same pictures you did. You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name.
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I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and white nationalists because they should be condemned totally.
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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.
However, Democrats, including some of the 2020 candidates, have continued to push a narrative that Trump called white supremacists “very fine people,” when he clearly did not.
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