- Former Vice President Joe Biden shut down a Breitbart News reporter who went up to him and falsely claimed President Donald Trump never called neo-Nazis "very fine people" after the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville back in 2017.
- The heated exchange between the leading Democratic presidential candidate and Breitbart reporter Joel Pollak happened on Thursday afternoon at the Iowa State Fair and it was caught on video.
- In the video, Biden struck a fiery tone. He repeatedly pointed his finger in Pollak's face to drive his argument across and spoke angrily at him for distorting Trump's remarks.
- After the Charlottesville rally, Trump defended the white supremacists, saying, "You also had people that were very fine people, on both sides."
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Former Vice President Joe Biden shut down a Breitbart News reporter who went up to him and falsely claimed President Donald Trump never called neo-Nazis "very fine people" after the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville back in 2017.
The heated exchange between the leading Democratic presidential candidate and Breitbart reporter Joel Pollak happened on Thursday afternoon at the Iowa State Fair. It was caught on video and posted on Twitter.
In the video, Biden struck a fiery tone. He repeatedly pointed his finger in Pollak's face and speaks angrily at him for distorting Trump's remarks.
.@JoeBiden rips into a man at the #IowaStateFair who claims he is misquoting Trump’s “very fine people” and the president did not call the Charlottesville marchers that pic.twitter.com/difCUZ4gEi
— Emma Kinery (@EmmaKinery) August 8, 2019
"No, he did not. He said, he walked out and he said ... let's get this straight," Biden said. "He said there were 'very fine people' in both groups. They're chanting anti-Semitic slogans, carrying flags."
Biden then walked away from Pollak.
The August 2017 rally in Charlottesville saw violent clashes between white supremacists and counterprotesters over the removal of Confederate statues in the South. During the protests, a car driven by a white supremacist plowed into a crowd of peaceful protesters, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer.
A few days later, Trump drew a moral equivalency between the two groups and said "there was blame on both sides."
Then he defended the white supremacists, saying, "You also had people that were very fine people, on both sides." The driver was indicted on federal hate crime charges, found guilty, and recently sentenced to life in prison.
Biden has repeatedly cast Trump's actions in Charlottesville as a central reason for his entry into the presidential race, coming back to it in his stump speeches across the country.
The argument between Biden and the Breitbart reporter comes after the deadly shooting in El Paso, Texas, that left 22 people dead. Law enforcement have pointed to a racist, anti-immigrant manifesto written by the suspected shooter, which used the language of white supremacists. It thrust the nation into a searing debate over Trump's anti-immigrant rhetoric emboldening white supremacists to carry out deadly attacks.
In the shooting's aftermath, several prominent candidates like Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, as well as former Rep. Beto O'Rourke have called Trump a white supremacist.
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