Did Trump call Nazis very fine people from Charlottesville

1. What he actually said — the verbal record

At a Trump Tower press event three days after Heather Heyer’s killing, Trump answered reporters by saying "you had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides," a line that is captured in multiple transcripts and video of the exchange ^{[1] [2] [5]}. The full transcript shows he followed that remark by qualifying he was not "talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally," a sentence that appears in contemporaneous reporting and later summaries ^{[1] [6]}.

2. The immediate context — timing and adjacent statements

Trump’s "very fine people" phrase came amid an initial public statement that condemned "the display of hatred, bigotry, and violence on many sides" and was delivered days after a rally where Nazi symbols and chants were documented and a counterprotester was killed by a car attack ^{[6] [7]}. Transcripts show reporters pressed him about who he meant, and the exchange included Trump saying some attendees were there to protest the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue; that broader context is central to how different listeners parsed the line ^{[1] [6]}.

3. Did he call neo-Nazis "very fine people"? The textual answer

Verbally, Trump did not say the words "neo-Nazis" were "very fine people" in the exact phrasing; he uttered "very fine people on both sides" and elsewhere in that exchange twice condemned neo-Nazis and white nationalists as groups that "should be condemned totally" ^{[1] [3]}. Fact-checkers and transcript reviewers (for example Snopes and FactCheck.org) note that the precise words he used do not include "neo-Nazis" followed immediately by "very fine people," but they also emphasize that Trump’s and his campaign’s later insistence he never praised white supremacists overlooks how many listeners understood the implication of his “both sides” language ^{[4] [3]}.

4. How interpreters split: media, supporters, and critics

Supporters and some allied outlets have argued the line was misread and point to Trump's explicit condemnations of white supremacists in the same breath and in subsequent statements, including campaign press defenses that insist he "totally" condemned neo‑Nazis ^{[8] [3]}. Critics and many journalists counter that even with those condemnations, the "very fine people on both sides" phrasing created an appearance of moral equivalence between violent white supremacists and counterprotesters, a reading that fueled national outrage and persistent framing of the episode as an inadequate presidential response ^{[9] [6]}.

5. Why the controversy endures and what the evidence supports

The dispute endures because the literal record supports both claims: Trump said "very fine people on both sides" (fact) while also issuing condemnations of neo‑Nazis (fact), leaving public interpretation to weigh whether his primary rhetorical effect was defense, equivocation, or clarification ^{[1] [3] [4]}. Reporting in local and national outlets documents how that combination — timing, wording, and subsequent political uses by opponents and defenders — turned a few lines of remarks into a larger debate about moral clarity, media framing, and political consequences ^{[9] [6]}.

6. Bottom line — direct answer to the question

Yes, Donald Trump said there were "very fine people" "on both sides" at Charlottesville, but he did not, in the exact phrasing, say the words "neo‑Nazis" were "very fine people"; he simultaneously and elsewhere in the exchange condemned neo‑Nazis and white supremacists, a factual nuance that has produced sharply opposing claims about whether he effectively praised them ^{[1] [2] [3] [4]}.