President Joe Biden invoked the “very fine people hoax” in his farewell address to the Democratic National Convention on Monday night, using a proven lie, once more, that has been repeatedly debunked, to his face.
The hoax claims that President Donald Trump referred to neo-Nazis who rioted in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017 as “very fine people.” In fact, as the transcript of his remarks shows, Trump condemned them “totally.”
Biden used the hoax to launch his campaign in April 2019. Breitbart News confronted him directly in August 2019 with the evidence that Trump had, in fact, condemned the neo-Nazis. Biden denied it and repeated the hoax again.
Since then, the hoax has been debunked, repeatedly — including, most recently, by the left-leaning Snopes website.
Former President Trump debunked the hoax during his recent debate with Biden; former Vice President Mike Pence did so during his 2020 debate with then-Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA); it was debunked on national television during Trump’s second impeachment trial.
Yet Biden has continued to repeat the lie, almost verbatim — although he has recently added the claim that the Ku Klux Klan paraded “without hoods” because they saw an ally in Trump.
Ironically, as Biden tried to associate his opponent with antisemitism, thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators, including some waving flags of Hamas and other terror organizations, demonstrated outside the convention venue.
Biden therefore will leave the political scene as he entered it: with a lie that has encouraged division, hatred, and fear throughout the country, and which has defied repeated efforts by well-meaning Americans to respond with the truth.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of “”The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days,” available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of “The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency,” now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.