Hey, Any *Famous Internet Debunking Emporium* Publish Anything Insane This Week?

Man, 2024, huh? Way back in the olden days of 2016 or so, I don’t think any of us had any idea how bad things were going to get. Now we’re deep in the throes of climate change, at least one pandemic (yes, folks, it’s still a pandemic), we’re in a full-blown information war that preys on post-industrial borders, and oh yeah, there’s an election looming. 

Things are so fucked up that I’m coming out of fact-checking retirement. Man, what the fuck is going on? 

I’m much too classy to name my former employer that really biffed it this past week, but it rhymes with dopes, and lost hopes, and go piss up ropes, and you may have heard that they put out a real stinker of a fact-check that everyone, including my own mother, immediately sent to me.  

Here’s the headline: “No, Trump Did Not Call Neo-Nazis and White Supremacists ‘Very Fine People’”  

And the subheading: “Trump’s remarks about the deadly Charlottesville ‘Unite the Right’ rally in 2017 remain controversial.”

You can read the rest of the article here, if you want to, I guess. 

First of all, as the person who was once responsible for running that site, and who was there during Charlottesville and the subsequent shitshow that Donald Trump and his disinformation demons made of it, I just want to say what the fuck. What the fuck? What are you thinking? Why would you publish this, seven years after the fact? You could have just dug back into your own archives and republished that story, and I’ll tell you what, you should have.  

That brings me to a side question. We had an extensive, well-networked archive and a stellar archivist who handled its organization behind the scenes. What happened to those? What happened to her? Why didn’t they just look at previous coverage? WHAT IS WRONG WITH EVERYBODY? 

Anyway, there was something just really strange about the way this is worded, even before the editor’s note* was added to the page. Check out this paragraph, marked “context”:

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. He said in the same statement he wasn’t talking about neo-Nazis and white nationalists, who he said should be “condemned totally.”

The story goes on to say that Trump had specified that he meant the people who attended the “Unite the Right” rally who weren’t neo-Nazis or white supremacists. 

Which non-neo-Nazis were those? David Duke and Richard Spencer? The large crowd of tiki-torch wielding white men chanting “Jews will not replace us”? That wasn’t a small group of fringe protesters. THAT WAS THE WHOLE GODDAMN EVENT!!! 

To relitigate this seven years later and come to a conclusion this far from the truth, especially after everything that has gone down since then, is to play directly into the hands of the far Right. 

Here’s the New York Times at the time: Trump Gives White Supremacists an Unequivocal Boost. It was so unequivocal, the By God New York Times could see it!

Yes, Trump said it. Here’s the immediate context of the question, from a press conference (not in a statement, as a certain site described it) on August 15, 2017, taken from the full transcript:  

Reporter: The neo-Nazis started this. They showed up in Charlottesville to protest —

Trump: Excuse me, excuse me. They didn’t put themselves — and you had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides. You had people in that group. Excuse me, excuse me. I saw the same pictures as you did. 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.

The question was literally about neo-Nazis! Yes, he was talking about neo-Nazis! There is absolutely no interpretation of that exchange that can conclude that this wasn’t about white supremacists and neo-Nazis, because all of them were white supremacists and neo-Nazis!  

He didn’t stop there, either, just in case you’ve somehow been unconscious for the past decade or lost your memory somehow, in which case I’m beyond envious. In fact, he continues to make daily statements that are either dogwhistles or outright white supremacist ideas in every single appearance and has done so for years. 

And here’s the “… should be condemned utterly” exchange, in its full context:

Reporter: I do love Thomas Jefferson.  

Trump: Okay, good. Are we going to take down the statue? Because he was a major slave owner. Now, are we going to take down his statue?

So you know what, it’s fine. You’re changing history. You’re changing culture. And you had people — and I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists because they should be condemned totally. But you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists. Okay? And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly.  

Now, in the other group also, you had some fine people. But you also had troublemakers, and you see them come with the black outfits and with the helmets, and with the baseball bats. You had a lot of bad people in the other group.  

Reporter: Sir, I just didn’t understand what you were saying. You were saying the press has treated white nationalists unfairly? I just don’t understand what you were saying.” 

That makes two of us, Reporter. That makes two of us.

Here’s Jamelle Bouie trying to puzzle through it on Bluesky: “[The reporter] also ignores that Trump gave an initial statement where he condemned ‘extremism, violence and bigotry’ on many sides, the backlash to which prompted him to issue the later ‘condemnation’ of white supremacists.”

That’s this one: “We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides.”

You can’t just look at public figures’ statements in isolation — Trump saying he’s not talking about the Nazis, “who should be condemned,” while literally talking about the side that is only made up of Nazis — you have to look at the totality of their actions, the context around what they said, and what they did after that. Or you could just dig back through your own goddamn archives and republish your material from back then, you ever think of that? 

But don’t just take it from me! Here at Twitter is AR Moxon, who just wrote a book about it (Wonkette commission link)!

Let’s do the [sleight] of hand, first. The article presupposes to answer the question “Did Trump call Neo-Nazis and white supremacists ‘very fine people’? This is savvy if what you want to exonerate the comments, because it answers the wrong question, and dismisses the right one.

What Trump said is that there are “very fine people on both sides.” That would be the side counter protesting against the Nazis who organized a pro-Confederacy protest. And then the side full of Nazis and those who found common cause with Nazis. That’s the “both sides.”

The actual complaint isn’t that Trump directly called the Nazis “very fine people,” but rather that there is a distinction to be found between Nazis and those who march with Nazis, and that the distinction is meant to be meaningful. Because they, unlike Nazis, are “very fine.”

The further complaint is that Trump, by saying there are “very fine people ON BOTH SIDES,” draws a moral equivalent between those who march with Nazis in common and united cause, and those who march against them. Those are the actual criticisms, which Snopes ignores. Presto!

More at the link.

Here’s a pro tip: Fact-checking doesn’t look like calmly correcting the record, even if you somehow blunder into getting the facts right. Fact-checking and debunking is rough-and-tumble and requires a thick skin, absolute dedication to the truth, and a terrible personality that enables you to keep pushing through lies and death threats, because liars don’t like being outed. It’s just science!

That’s the only way it’s going to work. Both-sidesing settled history in the name of political fairness? Save that one for blind dates or talking down your bigot uncle over holiday meals. 

And that’s today’s lesson in the weaponization of fact-checking. Because you know who is celebrating Trump’s “exoneration” this week? The global far Right.

Great work all around, everybody!

Snopes editor’s note, added after an entire ration of shit: “Editors’ Note: Some readers have raised the objection that this fact check appears to assume Trump was correct in stating that there were “very fine people on both sides” of the Charlottesville incident. That is not the case. This fact check aimed to confirm what Trump actually said, not whether what he said was true or false. For the record, virtually every source that covered the Unite the Right debacle concluded that it was conceived of, led by and attended by white supremacists, and that therefore Trump’s characterization was wrong.”

Wonkette editor’s note: There’s too many great journalists like Brooke who need work, and I want to give it to them. Help Wonkette make the pie higher, please, if you are able!

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