A left-wing C-list actor has admitted that he was swayed by the media’s lies about former President Donald Trump and the 2017 riot in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Michael Rapaport, one of the most vicious and foul-mouthed of Trump’s many Hollywood critics, told podcaster Patrick Bet-David on Friday that he went all-in on the media narrative about Trump’s “very fine people” comments at the time and now realizes he was wrong to swallow that.
Rapaport admitted that “when you take a step back,” Trump’s time in office differed from what the media portrayed.
“I will acknowledge that one thing about the Charlottesville that I ranted about. And I was wrong about the ‘both sides’ thing,” Rapaport said.
“That was so irresponsible.”
“Because he said the both sides, you know, there’s good people on both sides. And when you see the full quote, that wasn’t what he said,” Rapaport added.
“And you know, I ranted on him hard for that. Hard. There’s some video about it, whatever. I mean, I ranted hard because I was like, what are you talking about, man?”
Under prodding from co-host Adam Sosnick, Rapaport agreed that things were bad under President Joe Biden with the border crisis, the war in Gaza, gender ideology, and racial politics.
While he said he still couldn’t come fully around to actually voting for Trump, Rapaport made clear that he could not support Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, or California Gov. Gavin Newsom, if he jumped in.
To recap why Rapaport had a change of heart, the media has long misled people about Trump’s comments on Charlottesville, which Biden said actually led him to run for president in 2020.
Here is what Trump actually said at the time, including condemning the white supremacists who were in Charlottesville to protest the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee:
“Excuse me, they didn’t put themselves down as neo-Nazis, and you had some very bad people in that group. 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 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.”
He then added:
“I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and white nationalists because they should be condemned totally. But you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists, OK? And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly. Now, in the other group, you had some fine people, but you also had some troublemakers and you see them come with the black outfits and with the helmets and with the baseball bats. You had a lot of bad people in the other group, too.”
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