Announcing his third presidential campaign on Thursday, former Vice President Joe Biden cited, as his primary motivation for running, the debunked claim that President Trump had referred to neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, Virginia, as “very fine people.”
“Charlottesville is also home to a defining moment for this nation in the last few years,” Biden said in a 3.5-minute YouTube video, referring to the 2017 riots against Trump, followed by footage of neo-Nazis marching.
“And that’s when we heard the words of the President of the United States that stunned the world and shocked the conscience of this nation. He said there were, quote, some ‘very fine people on both sides.’ Very fine people on both sides? With those words, the president of the United States assigned a moral equivalence between those spreading hate, and those with the courage to stand against it.”