Two days after he refused to explicitly say so, Donald Trump called into the Hannity show on Fox “News” Thursday night to finally condemn racist groups and white nationalism. His statement in its entirety:
“I go through this every year, every time somebody says something, and…” Trump whined. “You look at their records, their records are horrible. It’s fake news. You look at– I watch, eh, [Fox “News” reporter] John Roberts screaming at, uh, uh, Kayleigh [McEnany, the White House press secretary] and Kayleigh, Kayleigh was so wonderful the way she handled it, but I watched him screaming, and his wife, John’s wife, was saying ‘What are you doing?’ because yesterday I made a statement that, according to most, it was a perfect statement, but I said it so many times even beyond that, and no matter what you say, it’ll never– they’ll just keep going, going, going and y’know Biden did the 1994 crime bill–that’s the superpredator bill–so he did the superpredator bill and when you look at it– but Mark Levin is right. He’s 100% right, no matter what you say [Hannity then starts talking over Trump] it won’t make any difference and I have to say–I’ve said it many times–and let me be clear again: I condemn the KKK. I condemn all white supremacists. I condemn the, ah, Proud Boys. I don’t know much about the Proud Boys, almost nothing, but I condemn that, but he should condemn also antifa. Antifa’s a horrible group of people. They kill people. They, what they do to people and they’re causing insurrection. They’re causing riots. He doesn’t want to do that, but the press doesn’t go after him, and that’s a really bad group of people. But I condemn them, and if I say it a hundred, if I say it a hundred times, it won’t be enough because it’s fake news.”
FACT CHECK 1: Trump demeaned Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden during the Tuesday debate for using the term “superpredator” when, in fact, Biden has not been recorded using the term. Hillary Clinton did once when she was First Lady, and she was widely criticized for the racial implications of that term. Trump is now using it to describe the 1994 Crime Bill.
FACT CHECK 2: Mark Levin is rarely right about anything.
FACT CHECK 3: Biden has condemned violence in protests.
FACT CHECK 4: As Biden noted during the Tuesday debate, antifa is a ideology, not a group, as FBI Director Christopher Wray stated in Congressional testimony on September 17th. It stands for anti-fascist. World War II vets were anti-fascists.