Some of Donald Trump’s biggest and newest supporters from the financial world and Silicon Valley, including Elon Musk and Bill Ackman, have sought in recent weeks to whitewash comments made by the former president and current Republican presidential candidate in connection with the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017.
Last week, both Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign team and President Joe Biden highlighted Trump’s comments from August 15, 2017, when the former president said there were “very fine people on both sides” in the clashes that followed the neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville.
For years, Trump’s supporters have defended his comments, claiming he was talking about a nonexistent group of non-racist protesters who were only there to protest the removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.
While Trump condemned the white supremacists and neo-Nazis who attended the rally, those covering the event have repeatedly pointed out that the march involved only extremists, including members of the so-called alt-right, white nationalists, neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klan members, and far-right militias. Trump’s comments about “fine people” were misleading at best and tacit support for extremists at worst, though he later distanced himself from them. Trump has been repeatedly criticized by critics for his comments, but false claims by Trump supporters have persisted. They resurfaced earlier this year when a Snopes 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, led and attended by white supremacists, and that Trump’s characterization was therefore false.”
But in recent weeks, Trump’s supporters in Silicon Valley and on Wall Street have also tried to rewrite history, some of whom began officially supporting the former president after Trump’s assassination attempt last month.
David Marcus, the crypto entrepreneur and CEO of Lightspark who has supported the Democratic Party for years, announced last month that he was now supporting Trump’s campaign.
In an X post that was viewed 33 million times last week, Marcus claimed that Trump’s comment about “very fine people” was intentionally taken out of context by the media. “Recognizing 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 seventh anniversary of Trump’s comment.
Responding 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 would donate $300,000 to the Trump campaign.
This was not the first time Maguire had questioned what happened in Charlottesville: In June, Maguire quoted a post from the disinformation account End Wokeness, writing on X: “Remember in Charlottesville when Trump called neo-Nazis very fine people? I just saw the whole clip for the first time today. This is a must-see – he literally CONDEMNS the neo-Nazis and white nationalists.”
