Some of Donald Trump's biggest and newest supporters from finance and Silicon Valley, including Elon Musk and Bill Ackman, have spent the past several weeks trying to whitewash comments the former president and current Republican presidential nominee made in relation to the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017.
In the past week, the Kamala Harris presidential campaign and President Joe Biden both highlighted Trump’s August 15, 2017 comment, when the former president said there were “very fine people on both sides” of the clashes that followed the neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville.
For years, Trump supporters have defended his comments, claiming he was speaking about a nonexistent group of nonracist rallygoers who were there just to protest the removal of a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee.
While Trump did condemn the white supremacists and neo-Nazis who took part in the rally, those who covered the event have repeatedly pointed out that only extremists were involved in the march, including members of the so-called alt-right, white nationalists, neo-Nazis, Klansmen, and far-right militias. Trump’s “fine people” comments were at best misleading and at worst tacit support for extremists, despite his subsequent disavowal. Trump has consistently been slammed by critics for his comments, but false claims from Trump supporters have persisted. They resurfaced earlier this year when Snopes published a fact check titled “No, Trump Did Not Call Neo-Nazis and White Supremacists ‘Very Fine People.’” Snopes later added an editor’s note, clarifying that those covering the rally said it was “conceived of, led by, and attended by white supremacists, and that therefore Trump's characterization was wrong.”
But over the past few weeks, Trump’s supporters in Silicon Valley and Wall Street—some of whom began officially supporting the former president following his assassination attempt last month—have also tried to rewrite history.
David Marcus, the crypto entrepreneur and CEO of Lightspark who has been a Democratic Party supporter for years, posted last month that he was now backing Trump’s campaign.
In an X post last week that has been viewed 33 million times, Marcus claimed that Trump’s “very fine people” comment had been purposely taken out of context by the media. “Realizing that this was and continues to be a lie was a turning point for me,” Marcus wrote on X, quoting a post from the official Harris campaign account that marked the seven-year anniversary since Trump made the comments.
In response to Marcus’ post, Shaun Maguire, a partner at venture capital firm Sequoia Capital, wrote: “Totally agree.” Hours after the assassination attempt last month, Maguire said he was donating $300,000 to the Trump campaign.
This wasn’t the first time Maguire challenged what happened in Charlottesville: In June, Maguire cited a post from disinformation account End Wokeness and wrote on X: “Remember Charlottesville when Trump called neo-Nazis very fine people? I only saw the full clip for the first time today. It’s a must watch—he literally CONDEMNS the Neo Nazis and white nationalists.”
Elon Musk, who has been Silicon Valley’s loudest Trump supporter in the weeks since the attempted assassination, shared multiple posts related to this. Musk shared Marcus’ post on August 16, commenting: “Always view the source material.” Musk’s post has been viewed almost 30 million times.
Musk also shared a post this week from right-wing activist and Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, who was responding to a reference to the “very fine people” comment during Biden’s DNC speech. “Dear Joe, for the 1000th time, the ‘very fine people’ story you keep repeating, is a debunked lie and a hoax,” wrote Kirk on X.
(Again, while Trump did condemn neo-Nazis and white supremacists, he also said there were “fine people” among those at the rally, where the crowd was made up only of extremists.)
Musk also shared a post from Mark Pincus, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur best known as the founder of mobile gaming giant Zynga. Pincus, who has said he has yet to decide on which candidate he will vote for, wrote on X last week: “This is the best example of how we have all been manipulated by MSM.” Pincus was quoting the June post from Maguire. Musk responded: “Yup.”
Pincus’ post was shared by Musk as well as David Sacks, an influential tech investor who is closely allied with the X owner. Musk’s different posts on the topic have been cumulatively viewed almost 80 million times.
Another Musk ally, billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, was among the very first to publicly endorse Trump in the hours after the shooting. Last week, he shared a post from anti-LGBTQ hate account Libs of TikTok to his 1.4 million followers that claimed “Biden and Kamala both lied and spread the ‘very fine people’ hoax again this week. It’s easily debunked by watching the full video. This is the video they don’t want you to see.”
The suggestion that the full, unedited video of Trump’s comments has somehow been scrubbed from the internet over the past seven years is central to many of the claims being made in the past week—even though the video is widely available on any number of platforms.
