There's the old saying that if you repeat a lie often enough people will believe it. Is that phrase still accurate even if there's direct evidence to the contrary?
As the 2024 CNN Presidential Debate continued Thursday evening, President Joe Biden repeated a verified lie and even rubber stamped it when called out on it.
Here's what Biden said initially:
What American president would ever say Nazis coming out of fields, carrying torches, singing the same anti-Semitic bile, carrying swastikas were fine people? This is a guy who says [German dictator Adolf] Hitler's done some good things. I'd like to know what they are. Good things Hitler's done. That's what he said. This guy has no sense of American democracy.
"Jake [Tapper], both of you know that story's been totally wiped out, because when you see the sentence it said 100 percent exoneration of that story," Trump responded.
Biden reiterated the "fine people on both sides" lie without citing the context and Trump's subsequent condemnation of white supremacists and neo-Nazis.
Even left-leaning fact-checker Snopes called the "very fine people" narrative was "false" and included a transcript of EXACTLY what Trump said following the Charlottesville, Virginia incident.
Reporter: The neo-Nazis started this thing. They showed up in Charlottesville.
Trump: 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. You had people in that group — excuse me, excuse me, I saw the same pictures as you did — 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. George Washington was a slave owner. Was George Washington a slave owner? So will George Washington now lose his status, are we gonna take down — excuse me — are we gonna take down statues of George Washington? How about Thomas Jefferson? What do you think of Thomas Jefferson? You like him? Okay good. Are we gonna take down the statue? Cause he was a major slaveowner. Now are we gonna take down his statue? So you know what? It's fine. You're changing history, you're changing culture, and you had people — 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, okay? And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly. Now, in the other group also, you had some fine people, but you also had troublemakers, and you see them come with the black outfits, and with the helmets, and the baseball bats, you got a lot of bad people in the other group too.
As for the Hitler praising that Biden said Trump is guilty of, that was based on a quotes provided from jilted former Chief of Staff under Trump, retired Gen. John Kelly, who provided the comments for CNN contributor Jim Sciutto's book, "The Return of Great Power." So, there's no direct evidence that Trump ever said the quote about Hitler.
Stay tuned to MRCTV for more debate news.