'It was nothing': Trump minimizes violent Charlottesville neo-Nazis as 'a little peanut'

Former President Donald Trump made headlines in 2017 after insisting that there were "very fine people on both sides" after the deadly Charlottesville, Virginia "Unite the Right" rally that ended in a violent hate crime. And on Thursday, he brought up Charlottesville once again, this time completely unprompted.

After Judge Juan Merchan dismissed Trump and the jury after Thursday's testimony by witness David Pecker, Trump walked out to a gaggle of reporters and offered his impromptu take on the trial and other issues that he's using to define his campaign. At one point, the former president brought up the wave of protests spreading across college campuses in support of Palestinians amid the Israeli assault on Gaza.

While Jewish students participating in the protests maintain that demonstrations in support of Gaza aren't anti-Semitic, Trump nonetheless seized on reports of Jewish students feeling unsafe as justification to broadly label the protest movement as hateful.

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"Charlottesville was a little peanut," Trump said. "And it was nothing compared — and the hate wasn't the kind of hate that you have here," Trump said.

Of course, the main difference between the pro-Palestine demonstrations at college campuses and the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville is that while there have not yet been any acts of violence reported from student protesters, one of the participants in the Charlottesville rally drove his car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing activist Heather Heyer and injuring more than 30 others. In 2019, the driver of the vehicle was sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty to 29 out of 30 federal hate crime charges.

On the night before the rally, a crowd of white supremacists from groups like the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and the openly pro-Nazi Traditionalist Worker Party marched to a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee chanting slogans like "blood and soil" and "Jews will not replace us." Former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke said the rally represented "a turning point for the people of this country."

"We're going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump because he said he's going to take our country back," Duke said at the time.

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To contrast, the pro-Palestinian encampment at Columbia University in New York City recently held a Passover Seder, which is the traditional meal that accompanies the observance of one of the most significant Jewish holidays.

"Our Jewish sisters and brothers at Columbia lead us in the most important tradition of Passover, the Seder meal," City University of New York criminal justice lecturer Danny Shaw wrote on Facebook, with a photo of the Seder. "Song and prayer precede and follow the customary meal."

Despite the protests being overwhelmingly peaceful and nonviolent, universities have largely responded to them with a heavy-handed approach. In a video posted Thursday by Atlanta CBS affiliate reporter Patrick Quinn, Emory University professor Noelle McAfee — who is the chair of the university's philosophy department — is seen being arrested by an Atlanta Police Department officer wearing tactical gear and a ski mask.

Watch the video of Trump's comments below, or by clicking this link.

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