That was the first big test of whether we were going to enter a new era of normalized political violence, and we (his voters, but collectively we as a country) flunked it. Wave of violence it is, I guess. Reckoned at the time it wouldn’t be much fun, and go figure, it ain’t.
One person killed Heather Heyer.
Even Snopes doesn't endorse the "very fine people" narrative (https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-very-fine-people/). There is a single-page site dedicated to the topic: https://www.finepeoplehoax.net/. The Politifact coverage (https://www.politifact.com/article/2019/apr/26/context-trump...) makes it very clear that Trump's position was not at all consistent with the narrative you are trying to run with.
As Snopes and politifact confirms, Trump made the following statement about the "Unite the Right" protestors, a group of racists, anti-semites, KKK and neo-Nazis who had staged a violent rally followed by a vehicular murder: "you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides".
I meant to link exactly what I linked. The articles do not confirm your point.
You did not make a claim that he simply spoke those literal words. You used a paraphrase that misrepresented who he was referring to.
The sources do not say that he made this statement "about the 'Unite the Right' protestors". They also do not support describing them collectively as being all of those other things you call them.
I do not believe you are engaging in good faith, because someone engaging in good faith ought to notice the clear logical holes in the argument you are making. Especially since it has already been explained to you repeatedly by myself and others.
> of course he was talking about the "Unite the Right" protestors.
There were many protestors with a wide variety of views on many topics among them, who conducted themselves in a wide variety of ways. (All the same is true, of course, of the counter-protestors). To say "there were many fine people on both sides" is to say that each group contained people who were worthy of praise.
You say they were "a group of racists, anti-semites, KKK and neo-Nazis", but not all of them were racists, not all of them were anti-Semites, not all of them were KKK members, and not all of them were neo-Nazis.
Your initial claim was:
> when right wingers killed Heather Heyer, Trump called them "very fine people"
This means that you are saying that he described murderers this way; and then you went on to conflate "right wingers" with a variety of other terms of abuse.
This is blatant and flagrant logical fallacy (the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_composition). It is not logically valid to take a statement made about people "being on a side" (i.e. in a group) and represent it as a judgement of the "side" in general, nor of other people on that "side".
James Alex Fields Jr. killed Heather Heyer. "Right wingers", objectively, did not. "Unite the Right protestors", similarly, objectively, did not.
Donald Trump did not call James Alex Fields Jr. a very fine person. He did not refer to racists as "very fine people". He did not refer to anti-Semites as "very fine people". He did not refer to KKK members as "very fine people". He did not refer to neo-Nazis as "very fine people". He did not describe murder, racism, anti-Semitism, KKK membership or neo-Nazism as virtuous.
He also did not refer to "right wingers" as "very fine people", although of course he presumably believes there is nothing wrong with being politically to the right.
As said by Snopes even in the article headline, Trump did not "call neo-Nazis and white supremacists 'very fine people'. As explained in the article, he explicitly "condemned neo-Nazis and white nationalists outright and said he was specifically referring to those who were there only to participate in the statue protest." As shown in the original quotation, he explicitly described the violence as "vicious and horrible and it was a horrible thing to watch". Immediately before the pull quote, he explicitly said "and you had some very bad people in that group" (meaning the Unite the Right protestors). He explicitly elaborated the point: "But you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists, okay? And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly." When the reporter went on to ask a rhetorical question hinting at the same fallacy of composition, Trump explicitly distinguished the people he was praising from those he was criticizing: "The following day it looked like they had some rough, bad people. Neo-Nazis, white nationalists, whatever you wanna call them. But you had a lot of people in that group that were there to innocently protest". Which is to say, he explicitly agreed that neo-Nazis and white supremacists are "rough, bad people", which is in fact the opposite of calling them "very fine people".
You use this as a talking point because you are trying to paint Trump as someone who praises murderers. But you know, or at least reasonably ought to know, that your narrative is contradicted by the evidence, because the evidence has been shown to you multiple times. The plain meaning of what Trump said is very nearly the opposite of what you're presenting it as.
> when right wingers killed Heather Heyer, Trump called them "very fine people"
Trump did not call the killer a fine person, nor did he call everyone involved on the right fine people. He explicitly stated that there were, "some very bad people in that group." The "very fine people" was referencing those who were peacefully protesting both for and against the removal of historical monuments. If you watch the original video instead of the selective reporting this is all made very clear. You can watch or read the transcript of the "very fine people" press conference here: https://www.veryfinepeople.info
> When they killed Brian Sicknick, he called them heroes and pardoned them.
Brian Sicknick was not killed by anyone. The medical examiner ruled that he died of natural causes. There is no evidence that he was killed, which was reflected in the difficulty the prosecutors faced, and its why nobody was ever convicted of murder.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/brian-sicknick-capitol-riot-die... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Brian_Sicknick#Misinf...
On the topic of Sicknick, I don't find it credible that he died coincidentally the day after being assaulted. The timing alone is strong evidence that the two are related.
Even if it was "merely" an assault on a police officer, it's political violence and it's acceptable to every Republican voter. You opened this door.
I again strongly encourage you to go watch the video or read the transcript since it directly contradicts what you are continuing to claim. Trump explicitly said that that the neo-Nazis should be "condemned totally." A total condemnation is exactly the opposite of your claim that he was "excusing" or trying to "minimize" the events. I will also note that I find it quite odd that you claim to be upset about Trump allegedly downplaying violence, but then go on to downplay and minimize left-wing extremist violence. I believe that all political violence should be condemned, its unfortunate that you appear to believe otherwise.
> I don't find it credible that he died coincidentally the day after being assaulted.
I think we'll have to agree to disagree here, I don't find it likely that I will be convinced to ignore the medical expert who examined the case and the corresponding documentary evidence that points against the idea that Sicknick was killed.
The argument being used to rebut you depends on understanding the transcript in its entirety. Yours depends on taking a few words out of context and misrepresenting the party to whom they refer.
- the specific people who killed a protestor are condemnable
- people were engaging in passionate political demonstration for the issue they were invested in before the killing occurred. They were Americans participating in the American tradition of protest and demonstration, the "fine people" on both sides
Problem is, that second point clashes hard with the footage of the event that showed white-shirted white men carrying tiki torches chanting "blood and soil." Most charitably, Trump wasn't talking about those folks; he was talking about some more moderate, reasonable pro-Lee-statue protestors who were there before the tiki torch mob showed up.
I think people's skepticism that such a moderate protest group actually exists varies, and if your skepticism is dialed to 100%, it's real easy to conclude Trump meant the "Jews will not replace us" crowd were the "fine people" because they don't see any other people he could be talking about.
In my view, he said this and more, plainly and as comprehensibly as can be expected.
> Most charitably, Trump wasn't talking about those folks; he was talking about some more moderate, reasonable pro-Lee-statue protestors who were there before the tiki torch mob showed up.
He said very directly and explicitly that he was talking about the non-violent protestors:
> There were people in that rally — and I looked the night before — if you look, there were people protesting very quietly the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee. I'm sure in that group there was some bad ones. The following day it looked like they had some rough, bad people. Neo-Nazis, white nationalists, whatever you wanna call them. But you had a lot of people in that group that were there to innocently protest — and very legally protest — because I don't know if you know, they had a permit.
He draws a very clear contrast between who he considers "rough, bad people" and who he considers to have "innocently protested".
> Problem is, that second point clashes hard
Only because of a human tendency to assign people to ingroups and outgroups and commit the fallacy of composition. Logically speaking, there is no contradiction whatsoever.
> I think people's skepticism that such a moderate protest group actually exists varies
It shouldn't, first off because they were seen and documented (even if some of the footage may have been suppressed) and second because of a general base-rate assumption that protests have a reasonable basis and are mostly conducted by non-violent people (and fair, intellectually honest discussion doesn't throw that assumption away just because the idea expressed is in the "wrong" general direction).
Put another way: the consensus estimate is that the George Floyd protests in 2020-2021 caused close $2 billion in damages (mainly to property), including over half a billion within Minneapolis–Saint Paul, along with (per Wikipedia) 19 confirmed deaths and over 14,000 arrests. However, this became a global phenomenon with protests spread across thousands of cities and towns, with probably millions of people involved (I can't readily find an estimate) directly in the streets and many more simply taking actions such as putting BLM logos on their webpages. So even with that extent of violence and damage, it's perfectly reasonable to believe that a "moderate protest group actually existed". Right-wingers like to meme about news networks (CNN in particular as I recall) speaking of "mostly peaceful protests" against a background of widespread arson and looting seen on camera; but as it turns out this is not actually a contradiction.
> if your skepticism is dialed to 100%, it's real easy to conclude Trump meant the "Jews will not replace us" crowd
I saw the footage. I heard "You", not "Jews". In some cases, the "Y" may have sounded somewhat like a "J" because of interference from the trailing "s" of the previous iteration of the chant. But I didn't hear an "s" on the end of the word. That would come from a mental auto-correction after already hearing "Jew" and realizing that "Jew will" is ungrammatical.
> I saw the footage. I heard "You", not "Jews".
I believe your personal experience, but you didn't see the whole story. Both chants were given. Hilariously, one possible explanation is that a subset of the protestors performed mental auto-correction: hearing the "you" chant coming from other protestors, filtered through their own biases, they heard "Jew," went "Oh, we're finally doing this!" and started chanting "the quiet part loud," as it were. Given that "Blood and soil" was also chanted, it may be reasonable to infer that at least a subset of the protestors had mental priors that would make that substitution likelier than not.
(Not terribly important, but as a sidebar: your pull quote is an excellent example of what I mean when I say "word salad" regarding the current President. "There were people in that rally — and I looked the night before — if you look, there were people protesting very quietly the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee." is the kind of thing that would make a sentence diagrammer light their own hair on fire. He has a speaking style that leaves his words very open to multiple interpretations).
Entirely plausible. I don't think we have solid evidence, though. People showed me chants where they believed "Jews" was said and I didn't really hear it. At most it sounded as if a minority of them might have been saying it. That would make you technically correct, but I don't think the claims that are generally made accurately represent the situation.
> Given that "Blood and soil" was also chanted
I agree that this originates in hateful, extremist circles. I also think that people who hear it could validly assign different meaning to it and use it with that different meaning, and may validly feel that extremists don't get to decide what it means.
In my experience, very few people who oppose immigration (in majority-white or formerly-majority-white countries) consider themselves to hold a belief in the inferiority of non-white races. Certainly many more of them say things that understandably give the impression of such a belief. But many of them are of those races, too, and give no impression of an inferiority complex. If anything, they resent that they abided by rules that are now (in their view, at least) not being enforced against others of the same race.
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As regards "word salad":
> "There were people in that rally — and I looked the night before — if you look, there were people protesting very quietly the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee."
This is just Trump speaking the thoughts as they come to mind rather than taking the time to organize them into proper sentences. Taken literally the overall structure is ungrammatical. They are not a prepared speech being read aloud. But it takes little effort to refactor them. I understood this quote as:
> There were people in that rally who were very quietly protesting the fact that a statue of Robert E. Lee was being taken down. I know this because I looked into it the night before. If you had looked into it, you would know this too.
No, he was not. That is not what the words meant in context, and he also said many other things in the same speech that directly contradict you.
> it's political violence and it's acceptable to every Republican voter.
This does not follow, and making assertions like this is entirely outside of civil discussion.