President Joe Biden told donors the real reason he decided to run for president during a campaign reception on Wednesday night and then repeated the same story, nearly word for word, a few minutes later.
Crowds of white supremacists, Black Lives Matter supporters, Antifa individuals and other groups clashed during a “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017, a protest that turned violent and left several dead and injured. Biden recounted the rally twice during a campaign reception in New York City, crediting it with the reason he decided to run for president. (RELATED: Independent Voters Have A Major Concern That Could Sink Biden)
“But then along came, in August of 2017, Charlottesville, Virginia,” Biden said. “You remember those folks walking out of the fields literally carrying torches, with Nazi swastikas, holding them forward, singing the same vicious, antisemitic bile – the same exact bile – bile that was sung in – in Germany in the early ’30s. And a young woman was killed. A young woman was killed.”
“And this was – and I re – you may remember it,” Biden continued. “There was a consequential piece of business going on. And the former guy was asked, ‘What do you think would happen?’ He was the sitting president. And he said, ‘I thought there were some very fine people on both sides.'”
Biden explained that it was at that moment that he decided he was going to run for president once again.
The president then went on to detail his conversations with his family about his decision to run again and how his grandchildren encouraged him to enter the race.
Biden then repeated the story moments later.
“You know, you may remember that, you know, those folks from Charlottesville, as they came out of the fields and carrying those swastikas, and remember the ones with the torches and the Ku – accompanied by the Ku Klux Klan,” Biden said. “And in addition to that, they had – there were white supremacists. Anyway, they were making the big case about how terrible this was. And a young woman was killed in the process.”
“And my predecessor, as I said, was asked what he thought,” Biden continued. “He said, ‘There are some very fine people on both sides.’ Well, that kept ringing in my head.”
The president followed the anecdote by adding that it was after that rally in 2017 that he decided “he couldn’t be silent any longer” and would run again for president.
U.S. President Joe Biden steps off Maine One at the White House on September 17, 2023 in Washington, DC. The President spent the weekend in Delaware and is heading to New York City later in the day for the United Nations General Assembly. (Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)
Biden has previously mentioned the events in Charlottesville, Virginia, as the reason he decided to run for president, saying that the “soul of the nation” was at stake during the 2020 election.
During the Wednesday campaign event, the president also addressed growing concerns about his age, repeating a nearly identical line he used earlier in the week.
“You know, as you might have noticed, a lot of people seem a little focused on my age,” Biden said. “I get it. And believe me, I know better than anyone.”
The repeated story adds to the list of apparent gaffes made by the president in recent weeks; on the 22nd anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Biden claimed he had been at Ground Zero on Sept. 12, 2001. When asked by the Daily Caller to provide evidence that such a statement was true, the White House made no mention of a Biden visit on Sept. 12, 2001, instead pointing to his trip to Ground Zero on Sept. 20, 2001.