As expected, former vice president Joe Biden announced his candidacy for president today via a 6 a.m. tweet that included a video making it official.

The Hill reports:

Biden, 76, began his announcement by recounting the 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va. and Trump’s remark in its aftermath that there were “some very fine people on both sides,” referring to rally-goers and counter-protesters alike.

“With those words, the president of the United States assigned a moral equivalence between those spreading hate and those with the courage to stand against it,” Biden said. “And in that moment, I knew the threat to this nation was unlike any I’d ever seen in my lifetime.”

Biden is the 21st candidate to enter the Democratic presidential hopeful field, and has enjoyed good front-runner polling numbers for months as speculation swirled about a potential run.

Watch the video of his announcement below:

The “very fine people” out of context quote is the lie that will never die. It has been debunked over and over and over again by so many people, with the exception of the vast majority of the mainstream media and Democrats.

Even The Hill got it wrong. Trump did not praise white supremacist/neo-Nazi “rally-goers.” Let’s take a look at the transcript via Steve Cortes, who included direct links in a piece he wrote about this last month:

My colleagues seem prepared to dispute our own network’s correct contemporaneous reporting and the very clear transcripts of the now-infamous Trump Tower presser on the tragic events of Charlottesville. Here are the unambiguous actual words of President Trump:

“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.”

After another question at that press conference, Trump became even more explicit:

“I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and white nationalists because they should be condemned totally.”

Anyone who isn’t suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome can see the “fine people on both sides” remark was not in reference to any white supremacists/neo-Nazis in the crowd. Instead, he was referring to the people in the crowd who were for and against the statue’s removal who were not part of any violent hate groups or movements.

Why does the “he praised neo-Nazis and white supremacists” lie persist? Because the mainstream media and Democrats have vested interests in keeping it going. Many of the other 2020 presidential candidates have referenced the quote, including Sen. Cory Booker (NJ) and Beto O’Rourke. And when they do, they are never corrected. It’s treated as factual. And there is no “without evidence” phrasing to stories quoting them on it.

Why has Biden chosen to use the out of context Charlottesville quote as the backdrop for his announcement? Because his entrance into the race comes at a time when white candidates are basically being shamed by the left into apologizing for their “privilege”, and the Biden campaign may feel like this is a way he can appeal to minority voters and show that he “gets it” or whatever.

Instead it just shows that Biden, like the rest of the Democratic field of candidates, is open to shamefully manipulating the emotions of the American people and opening old wounds on race by lying about it.

Disgraceful.

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—Sister Toldjah is a former liberal and a 15+ year veteran of blogging with an emphasis on media bias, social issues, and the culture wars. Read her Red State archives here. Connect with her on Twitter.–