The Charlottesville lie — the absurd notion that President Trump called neo-Nazis “very fine people” after violence broke out during a white supremacist rally in 2017 — has officially resurfaced, compliments of a new HBO documentary titled, “Bill Joel: And So It Goes.”
In Part 2 of the documentary, Joel explains why he wore the yellow Star of David on stage a week after Charlottesville. “I had to do something,” he says in the film, continuing with this:
I was angry. Here they are, marching through an American city, saying ‘Jews will not replace us.’ We fought a war, you know, to defeat these people. And then when Trump comes out and says, ‘There were very fine people on both sides. You know, he should have come out and said, ‘those are bad people.’ There was no qualifying it. The Nazis are not good people. Period. And I was angry. And I had to do something.
Only Trump didn’t call Nazis very fine people, as the transcript of his presidential press conference, delivered on 8/15/17 from Trump Tower, shows very clearly. The “fine people” he was referring to were the two peaceful groups of Charlottesville demonstrators, who were arguing over the removal of the Robert E. Lee statue and the renaming of the park — not the neo-Nazis who destroyed property and tragically ran over and killed Heather Heyer.
“You also had some very fine people on both sides,” Trump said. “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.”
Trump went on to clarify his remarks so there would be no confusion. “I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists,” he said. “They should be condemned totally.”
When asked earlier in the press conference why he waited so long to denounce neo-Nazis, Trump explained he wanted to get the facts straight before making a statement. “[W]e condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence,” he told the reporter. “It has no place in America.”
Yet somehow Billy Joel is convinced Trump thinks Nazis are fine people. Incredibly, he looks directly into the camera during the documentary, telling his audience he had to do something to stand up against this supposed “Nazi supporter,” a man who polls extremely well in Israel, withholds federal funds from universities for anti-Semitism on campus, and whose daughter and son-in-law are Orthodox Jews.
HBO does its best to forward the Charlottesville lie, showing footage of the racial hatred displayed by neo-Nazis during the rally, mixing in Trump’s “very fine people” quote so even the dullest knife in the drawer can make the connection that the president is a supporter of white nationalists.
Billy Joel is a recovering alcoholic, suffers from depression, and has been in and out of rehab several times. He’s also a product of an extremely liberal entertainment industry. He is either misinformed about Charlottesville, or has decided to actively perpetuate this shameful lie created by the mainstream media.
And a mainstream media creation it most certainly is. PragerU said it best in their five-minute video, “What Happened in Charlottesville?”:
The scandal of Charlottesville is not what President Trump said about neo-Nazis. It’s what the media said President Trump said about neo-Nazis. It’s a scandal because news reporting is supposed to be about gathering facts, not promoting an agenda.
In Charlottesville, they got it exactly backwards. We have been living with the consequences ever since.
Plainly put: ABC, CBS, NBC, NPR, the New York Times, the Washington Post and the others spread a malicious lie that has poisoned our national dialogue.
And so, the lie lives on.
Image from Grok.