Trump downplays deadly Charlottesville rally by comparing it to campus protests over Gaza war

WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump on Thursday claimed the 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, was “nothing” compared to ongoing pro-Palestinian campus protests, the latest instance in which he has downplayed a racist incident that was one of the most criticized moments of his presidency.

Speaking in a Manhattan courtroom hallway at the day’s end of his criminal hush money trial, Trump blamed President Joe Biden for student protesters who have set up encampments as they call for a cease-fire in the war Israel launched after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack.

Biden has recently, as he often does, publicly brought up the Charlottesville rally that sparked his decision to run against Trump in 2020, where torch-wielding white supremacists marched to protest the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, chanting “You will not replace us!” and “Jews will not replace us!”

“We’re having protests all over. He was talking about Charlottesville,” Trump said. “Charlottesville was a little peanut. And it was nothing compared — and the hate wasn’t the kind of hate that you have here.”

<bsp-list-loadmore data-module="" class=«PageListStandardB» data-gtm-region=«READ MORE» data-gtm-topic=«No Value» data-show-loadmore=«true» data-gtm-modulestyle=«List B»> <bsp-custom-headline custom-headline=«div»> READ MORE </bsp-custom-headline> <bsp-custom-headline custom-headline=«div»> Hamas again raises the possibility of a 2-state compromise. Israel and its allies aren’t convinced </bsp-custom-headline> <bsp-custom-headline custom-headline=«div»> Carefully planned and partly improvised: inside the Columbia protest that fueled a national movement </bsp-custom-headline> <bsp-custom-headline custom-headline=«div»> Asylum seeker who