This is perhaps the most thoroughly debunked political misquote of the modern era, yet it persists because it's politically useful. The full transcript of Trump's August 15, 2017 press conference at Trump Tower tells a completely different story than the claim suggests.

Here is what Trump actually said, in context:

"You had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides. You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name."

A reporter then asked: "The neo-Nazis started this thing. They showed up in Charlottesville..."

Trump responded: "Excuse me, they didn't put themselves down as neo-Nazis, and you had some very bad people in that group. But you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides."

Then, crucially, in the very same exchange: "And I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists — because they should be condemned totally — but you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists."

He explicitly and unambiguously excluded neo-Nazis and white nationalists from his "fine people" comment. The full transcript has been publicly available since the day of the press conference. Snopes, which is not a conservative outlet, updated its fact-check in 2023 to acknowledge that the "very fine people" quote was taken out of context and that Trump did condemn neo-Nazis in the same remarks.

Even Tim Scott's former communications director, who is Black, confirmed that the full context tells a different story. Multiple journalists have acknowledged the misleading nature of the shortened quote, including RealClearPolitics' Steve Cortes and CNN's Jake Tapper, who noted Trump's explicit condemnation.

This misquote was used in Biden's 2020 campaign launch video as his primary motivation for running. It has been repeated in thousands of news articles without the exculpatory context. It is a textbook example of how a narrative can override a verifiable fact when the narrative serves a political purpose.

You don't have to like Trump to acknowledge that this specific claim is false. Honest discourse requires accurate quotation.