President Joe Biden repeated the “very fine people” hoax on Monday in an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt, just two days after an assassin attempted to kill former President Donald Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania and very nearly succeeded.
The hoax is the false claim that Trump praised neo-Nazis who rioted in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017. In fact, Trump said that the neo-Nazis should be “condemned totally.” The hoax has been repeatedly debunked by this news outlet, and was also recently debunked by Snopes. Critics of Biden say that the hoax causes many people to hate and fear Trump, and that his constant use of the hoax has inflamed political divisions to the point of political violence.
Biden attempted to strike a conciliatory tone in the interview, saying that he should not have used the word “bullseye” in a telephone call last week with donors. But he then went on to repeat the inflammatory “very fine people” hoax (from NBC transcript):
LESTER HOLT: You were in — in Delaware when this happened. What was your first reaction?
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: My first reaction was, “My God. This is” — look, there’s so much violence now and the way we talk about it. I mean, the whole notion that there is this — there’s — there’s no place at all for violence in politics in America. None. Zero. And — we’ve reached a point where it’s — it’s become too commonplace, not assassinations, but to talk about it. […]
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