‘Dilbert’ creator defends Trump remarks on Charlottesville

The creator of the comic strip “Dilbert” on Tuesday defended President Trump’s controversial remarks about the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., last year.

When pressed by “Fox & Friends” host Steve Doocy on whether he believes “fake news” exists, the comic creator, Scott Adams, said, “Clearly, yeah.”

He then used Trump’s comments about the protests and counterprotests more than a year ago in Charlottesville to make his argument. 

“I mean, my favorite example is Charlottesville,” Adams said. “When there was a protest about pro- and anti-statues and the president said that there were fine people on both sides, that was reported as he says there were fine people in the racist group, you know, the white supremacists.” 

{mosads}“That wasn’t really the context. The context was pro-statue, anti-statue,” Adams continued. 

“He probably could have been a little more clear with the language he used,” Doocy cut in.

“Absolutely could have been more clear. But the way it’s been presented as if the sitting president not only said that antifa was fine people — I’m sure he didn’t say that — but he also said the white supremacists were fine people in front of America and thought it was a good idea,”  Adams added. “That clearly never happened.”

Last year’s rally in Charlottesville was organized to protest the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee, but it took on a more sinister tone after dozens of white men tied to the white nationalist movement carrying torches marched around the University of Virginia’s campus chanting “Jews will not replace us.”

Those images shocked much of the country, and were widely criticized as they were seen by millions in subsequent days. It also led to more protests and counterprotests, which led to fights in the streets of Charlottesville and the death of a young woman after a man drive a car into a crowd of people demonstrating against white nationalists and racism.

Trump stopped short of condemning white supremacists in his initial reaction to Charlottesville, saying there’s “blame on many sides” in his initial reaction.

After he was criticized for not going after Nazis and white nationalists specifically, Trump two days later read from a prepared statement and criticized white nationalists, neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan.

But at a press conference in New York the following day, Trump reverted to his original comments, saying both sides were to blame and criticizing leftist protesters in antifa.

“I think there’s blame on both sides. You look at both sides. I think there’s blame on both sides,” he said. “And I have no doubt about it. And you don’t have any doubt about it either. And — and if you reported it accurately, you would say it.”

Trump said there were bad people on the right and the left in Charlottesville.

“You had some very bad people in that group,” he said of those who had come to Charlottesville to defend Confederate statues. “But you also had people that were very fine people on both sides. You had people in that group — excuse me, excuse me, I saw the same pictures as you did. You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park, from Robert E. Lee to another name.”

Trump went on to defend his own criticism of racist groups.

“I’ve condemned neo-Nazis. I’ve condemned many different groups. But not all of those people were neo-Nazis, believe me. Not all of those people were white supremacists, by any stretch. Those people were also there because they wanted to protest the taking down of a statue, Robert E. Lee.”