As pro-Palestinian student protests spread across college campuses, Donald Trump said that the deadly 2017 “Unite the Right” white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, was like a “peanut” in comparison.
In a post on Truth Social on Wednesday, the former president described the growing student protests as “riots” and used it as a line of attack against President Joe Biden, writing in part:
Crooked Joe Biden would say, constantly, that he ran because of Charlottesville. Well, if that’s the case, he’s done a really terrible job because Charlottesville is like a “peanut” compared to the riots and anti-Israel protests that are happening all over our Country, RIGHT NOW….
Trump doubled down Thursday, telling reporters at his New York trial that “Charlottesville was a little peanut.”
Let’s be clear about what Trump is saying: that the armed neo-Nazis who rallied in 2017 under the banner of upholding white supremacy — one of whom killed a person and injured dozens of others by ramming his car into counterprotesters — was “nothing” in comparison with the college students and faculty members who are protesting the destruction in Gaza during the Israel-Hamas war.
Trump is not the only politician who has made the outrageous comparison between Charlottesville and the current protests. But it’s especially striking coming from Trump; his handling of the 2017 rally — in which he insisted that there was “blame on both sides” — is widely considered one of the lowest points of his presidency. Biden has said that Trump’s response inspired him to run for president in 2020.
In the years since, Trump has continued to downplay the blatant hatred that was on display at the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville. In 2019, he told reporters that he’d “answered perfectly” when he said there were “very fine people on both sides,” and spoke admiringly of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.