By COLLEEN LONG (Associated Press)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump said on Thursday that the 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, was not as significant as ongoing pro-Palestinian campus protests. This is another instance in which he has minimized a racist incident that was heavily criticized during his presidency.
Speaking in a Manhattan courtroom hallway at the day’s end of his criminal hush money trial, Trump blamed President Joe Biden for student protesters who have set up encampments as they call for a cease-fire in the war Israel launched after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack.
Biden has recently, as he often does, publicly brought up the Charlottesville rally that sparked his decision to run against Trump in 2020, where torch-wielding white supremacists marched to protest the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, chanting “You will not replace us!” and “Jews will not replace us!”
Trump said, “We’re having protests all over. He was talking about Charlottesville. Charlottesville was a small matter. It was nothing compared — and the hate wasn’t the kind of hate that you have here.”
Trump has tried to blame reported instances of antisemitism around the campus protests on Biden. But in mentioning Charlottesville, Trump again brought up his history of attracting extremists and his repeated refusal to reject groups like the Proud Boys, some of whom would later participate in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
The Biden administration quickly condemned the comments.
“Downplaying the antisemitic and white supremacist poison displayed in Charlottesville is repugnant and divisive,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates said.
Hundreds of white nationalists gathered in the city on Aug. 11 and Aug. 12, 2017. Clashes between white nationalists and anti-racism protesters happened on both days, leading authorities to declare the gathering on Aug. 12 an “unlawful assembly” and to order crowds to disperse. It was after that announcement that a man rammed his car into a peaceful group of counter-protesters. One woman died; 35 others were injured.
Days after the deadly rally, Trump told reporters that “you had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides.”
It was, as Biden has said, when he knew he would run for president again. He talks about the moment often, including at a campaign event last week.
“When those folks came walking out of those fields — down in Charlottesville, Virginia — carrying Nazi banners, singing the same garbage that they sang in Hitler’s streets in Germany in the ’30s, carrying torches, accompanied by the Ku Klux Klan, and a young woman was killed, I decided that I had to run. I had to run,” he said. “Our democracy is at stake, and it really is.”
The protests that have swept across college campuses in recent days come as tensions rise in the U.S. over the nation’s role in the Israel-Hamas war, particularly as deaths mount in Gaza. More than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli offensive.
The protests have caused conflict among students. Some students who support Palestine want their schools to criticize Israel's attack on Gaza and stop doing business with companies that sell weapons to Israel. On the other hand, some Jewish students feel that the criticism of Israel has turned into antisemitism and made them feel unsafe. They also mention that Hamas is still holding hostages from a prior invasion. Some Jewish students have even joined the pro-Palestinian protests.
Over 100 people have been arrested during the protests. Biden has been trying to handle it politically.He has stated that students have the right to free speech while condemning antisemitic protests.
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