WaPo Still Spreading Notorious, Debunked Trump Hoax Seven Years Later

The Washington Post is still spreading one of the most notorious Trump hoaxes of the former president’s first term in office seven years later.

An unknown artist left a statue mocking Trump’s response to the Charlottesville, Virginia, Unite the Right Rally in 2017, when the then-president condemned neo-Nazis and white supremacists, but said that there were “very fine people on both sides,” referring to the debate on whether to remove historic Confederate monuments. In their article about the statue Monday night, WaPo, of course, failed to include a crucial quote from Trump that dispels the notion the president was praising neo-Nazis. (RELATED: Snopes Finally Corrects The Record On Notorious Trump Hoax — Seven Years Later)

“Responding to reporters’ questions a few days after the rally, Trump said, ‘There’s blame on both sides’ and ‘There were very fine people on both sides,’” WaPo reported in their story while ignoring, like so many other media outlets, the key quote from Trump.

“I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally,” Trump said at the time.

The hoax has been so blatant and debunked that even liberal fact-checking outlet Snopes was finally forced to correct the record seven years after the fact. It has also been repeated as a political attack, notably from Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

Fake Tiki Torch statue in Washington, D.C.

In April 2019, then-candidate Biden used the Charlottesville hoax as a launching pad for his 2020 presidential campaign, quoting Trump’s “very fine people on both sides” comment without including any of the context. Biden repeated it throughout his presidency. Harris herself spread the hoax in August 2024 after kicking Biden off the ticket.

Unfortunately for WaPo, their owner, Jeff Bezos, just roasted the newspaper Monday night for being too nakedly partisan toward Democrats as he attempts to rebrand the otherwise turbo, beltway-liberal publication that has increasingly sounded like the DNC comms team since Trump was first elected in 2016. Maybe the reporters and editors who worked on this story about the fake tiki torch statue should update the piece with an editor’s note and the full context of Trump’s remarks so that Daddy Bezos doesn’t get more upset with how pro-Harris activists have hijacked his newsroom.