Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign was recently given a major fact check after it touted a continually debunked claim about former President Donald Trump. A relatively new X account, KamalaHQLies, has been fact-checking false statements from Harris’ official campaign account, KamalaHQ. Most recently, the Harris campaign was called out for repeating a false claim that Trump had referred to neo-Nazis as “very fine people.”
KamalaHQLies provided crucial context to the statement taken out of context, which presents a misleading view of Trump’s statement. The account also noted that left-leaning Snopes had even fact-checked the claim, asserting that it was false. “Kamala HQ says Donald Trump called Neo-Nazis “very fine people,” the post read. “This claim has been debunked by left-wing Snopes and rated “false.”
In the statement in question, Trump said, “You had some very bad people in that group [the Neo-Nazi group], but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides.” However, KamalaHQLies pointed out, “In his statement Donald Trump goes on to disavow and condemn the Neo-Nazi group and any other group inciting violence in Charlottesville.”
A reporter asked Trump, “Let me ask you, Mr. President, why did you wait so long to blast neo-Nazis?” Trump replied, “I didn’t wait long. I didn’t wait long.” The reporter fired back, “Forty-eight hours.” Trump maintained that he wanted to make sure he had all the accurate information before making an officials statement on the events that occurred in Charlottesville.
“I wanted to make sure, unlike most politicians, that what I said was correct — not make a quick statement. The statement I made on Saturday, the first statement, was a fine statement. But you don’t make statements that direct unless you know the facts. It takes a little while to get the facts. You still don’t know the facts. And it’s a very, very important process to me, and it’s a very important statement,” Trump said.
“So I don’t want to go quickly and just make a statement for the sake of making a political statement. I want to know the facts. If you go back to –,” he continued, before doubling down. “Excuse me. Excuse me. Take it nice and easy. Here’s the thing: When I make a statement, I like to be correct. I want the facts. This event just happened. In fact, a lot of the event didn’t even happen yet, as we were speaking. This event just happened.”
Trump further emphasized, “Before I make a statement, I need the facts. So I don’t want to rush into a statement. So making the statement when I made it was excellent. In fact, the young woman, who I hear was a fantastic young woman, and it was on NBC — her mother wrote me and said through, I guess, Twitter, social media, the nicest things. And I very much appreciated that. I hear she was a fine — really, actually, an incredible young woman. But her mother, on Twitter, thanked me for what I said.”
Watch Trump’s full comments below:
Note: The featured image is a screenshot from the embedded video.
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