You've linked to the second interview he gave about Charlottesville. In his first statements[1] in an interview on August 12th, 2017, he famously didn't condemn white supremacists who murdered someone, saying instead that he condemns "egregious displays of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides".

Then, several days later in the second interview[2] on August 15th that you linked to, he equates the violent white nationalists that murdered someone with what he calls the "alt-left", the purported group that the murder victim belonged to, saying that he thinks there is blame on both sides. After asking for further clarification, he says that there were fine people on both sides. Only after further questioning, and in a separate statement, does he condemn white supremacists.

People were criticizing him for his initial equivocation on August 12th, comparing the white supremacists who murdered a person to the victims of their violence, and the fact that he didn't name or condemn white supremacists. In fact, when journalists asked him to condemn them, he walked away from the interview. He refused to differentiate between the two.

Then, on August 15th, he defends his initial comments through his continued equivocations in the second interview.

It isn't a hoax to criticize inappropriate equivocations, especially when it took him 4 days to muster out a condemnation, but still only after doubling down on the equivocations.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/08/12/tr...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/15/us/politics/trump-alt-lef...

That whole exchange is very different than what I have seen. Its actually alarming how reasonable he sounds in this clip. Believe me, I think he was an awful president, and I voted against him twice, but this is what I wish my liberal peers would admit about our own bias.

Are there evidence-based ratings for different publications? And is that the kind of thing that could be done at all objectively? If not objectively, at least methodically?

> And is that the kind of thing that could be done at all objectively?

No, unfortunately. And just as unfortunately, when you try to communicate why someone on "the other side" might have decent reasons for feeling the way they do, you are seen as an enemy. Alas this is human nature and not likely to change.

Sadly I have not found any trustworthy 'fact checkers' that are not in and of themselves also inherently biased.

But once you realize that every major news org seems perfectly willing to gaslight you fundamentally, you start to doubt basically everything you read.

If this one 'fact' about trump condemning nazis is so obviously a false story, how many other false stories are there?

The problem with this understanding is that it doesn't help you learn the truth, it just lets you understand that everyone is lying to you, and if you don't put in the exhausting work to find more information (assuming any is available) about every story you will be lied to with impunity.

When you offload the process of interpreting events to someone else, you lose the ability to tell truth from lies. When those people are so confident in their lying to do it on things like this, how many other things have they lied about?

It's a sad realization about the world.

It's important, I think, to not toss out the baby with the bathwater. Are fact checkers inherently biased? Probably. Should we ignore them? No. CNN's fact checkers called out the distortion on the 'both sides' discussion, as did PolitiFact and others.

When it comes to fact checker bias, PolitiFact is a good example to look at because they publish numbers on all the politicians. If you look at both left and right wing politicians, you'll see that they say plenty of inaccurate things. Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, Hillary Clinton, Biden, all say inaccurate or untrue things to the order of 20 - 45% of checked statements.

Trump is in a category all his own. 72% of his checked statements are inaccurate.

Of course you should subject those numbers to scrutiny. Certainly there is sample bias in what statements get checked. But it is easy to find many, many Trump statements in which he makes statements that are so verifiably untrue that it becomes easy to conclude that he has little interest in providing evidence for his opinions. This graduates him from garden variety bias into active malfeasance.

I think it's important to recognize bias and fight it, but in the end, the mainstream media at least holds itself to a factual standard, as do mainstream politicians on both sides. Trump is very, very different. He himself represents nothing more than a war on factuality itself and a disdain for consensus or evidence of any kind.

As a reply to your previous comment explains, this "fact" is not a false story.

Clever of you to only link to the second interview, although it does come across as a touch disingenuous.

“Stand back and stand by” is hardly a condemnation

I'm sorry but only an idiot would take that group of hipsters and provocateurs seriously, Trump said the next day he's not even familiar with the group.

Calling this evidence of 'racism' and 'fascism' is just pathetic.

Whatever, he said “stand back and stand by”. Politicians are word-smiths and that’s what he said. If anything it’s evidence of cluelessness which is also bad, given the responsibilities

That's the first time I've seen Trump described as a wordsmith!

He was echoing Wallace in his usual semi-coherent manner; Wallace used the term "stand down"

Never said he’s one, Politicians are. He cut his finger big time wielding a blade he wasn’t too familiar with

Biden said Biden has the most extensive voter fraud organization in history.

And he still managed to beat George in the election!

With all of his commentary about cities like Portland, one of the Proud Boys' favorite targets, there is almost no chance he's never heard of them. And with the number of documented, public lies made by him, why would you ever take a statement like that at face value?