“Honesty” isn’t just the title of one of Billy Joel’s best songs — it’s also what he should’ve given his audience in his latest documentary instead of repeating the “very fine people on both sides” hoax.

I spent my Friday evening like any loyal Joel fan would: watching part two of his Billy Joel: And So It Goes documentary on HBO Max. It was just as good as part one until Joel decided to wade into politics.

Talking about President Donald Trump’s 2017 speech in which he condemned white nationalists following the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, Joel said he just couldn’t “look away.”

“I had to do something. I was angry. Here they are marching through an American city saying, ‘Jews will not replace us.’ We fought a war to defeat these people! And then when Trump comes out and says, ‘There were very fine people on both sides,’ he should’ve come out and said, ‘Those are bad people.’”

But this is why entertainers should stick to merely entertaining. Because Trump didn’t call Neo-Nazis or white supremacists “very fine people.”

The 2017 Charlottesville rally involved protesters and counterprotesters demonstrating regarding the removal of the Robert E. Lee statue from a park. Sadly, a self-proclaimed “white nationalist” rammed his car through the crowd, killing one and injuring 19.

Days later Trump held a press conference in which he explicitly condemned neo-Nazis and white nationalists.

“But you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides,” Trump said, referring to those protesting the statue’s removal and counterprotesters. “I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally.”

In fact, the “very fine people on both sides” hoax has been debunked even by CNN’s Jake Tapper, who noted Trump was clearly referring to other protesters (which, note, does not encompass neo-Nazis and white supremacists).

“Now elsewhere, in those remarks, [Trump] did condemn neo-Nazis and white supremacists,” Tapper said in a CNN segment from 2019. “So he’s not saying that the neo-Nazis and white supremacists are ‘very fine people.’” 

Nearly seven years after Trump’s comments, Snopes finally fact-checked the “very fine people” hoax as false.

“In a news conference after the rally protesting the planned removal of a Confederate statue, Trump did say there were ‘very fine people on both sides,’ referring to the protesters and the counterprotesters,” wrote Snopes writer Taija PerryCook. “He said in the same statement he wasn’t talking about neo-Nazis and white nationalists, who he said should be ‘condemned totally.’”

Though the “very fine people” hoax has been thoroughly debunked, even by outlets that have an incentive to keep it alive, Joel parroted the old, false talking point. But “Honesty” shouldn’t stop at the lyrics.

Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in International Political Economy. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2