The Sconi

For the past seven years Steve Cortes has led the charge in combating the “Charlottesville Hoax"—misinformation that has been perpetuated by the mainstream media and Democrats following former President Donald Trump's now infamous 2017 press conference in which he condemned neo-Nazis for their role in a violent protest over the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue at the University of Virginia. 

In 2018, Cortes appeared in a video that went viral for debunking the narrative that Trump referred to neo-Nazis and white nationalists as “very fine people.” 

Cortes resurrected the video following the Sept. 10 presidential debate that saw Vice President Harris parroting the hoax to 67 million viewers on ABC. In a post on X, he described the misinformation as “one of the most disgusting lies in American politics." 

In an interview with The Sconi, Cortes described how the Charlottesville hoax has managed to live on despite being disproven years ago.  

“Biden used it as the predicate for his race in 2020,” Cortes told The Sconi. “He established his entire presidential race on a complete fabrication line on a proven lie. But he didn't stop there. He repeated it throughout his term in office. He repeated it during his debate against President Trump. And then Kamala Harris resuscitated the lie and used it in her debate against President Trump.”

In the video produced by PragerU, Cortes analyzed Trump's Charlottesville speech frame-by-frame, showing the moments when the former president made the remarks about “very fine people”—referring to both those who were for, and against, the removal of Robert E. Lee's statue, recognizing peaceful assembly and protest despite varying viewpoints. 

“I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists because they should be condemned totally,” Trump said during the press conference. "But you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists.” 

“The media reported that President Trump described neo-Nazis as very fine people,” Cortes said in the video. “Only he didn’t. In fact, he didn’t even hint at it. Just the opposite. He condemned the neo-Nazis in no uncertain terms."

Cortes characterized the hoax as a “political zombie lie that just refuses to die” noting that politicians have continued to campaign on the issue, like Harris did during the Trump debate.  

“Let's remember Charlottesville, where there was a mob of people carrying tiki torches spewing anti-Semitic hate. And what did the president then at the time say? There were fine people on each side,” Harris said during the debate with Trump. 

However, unlike the former president, Harris was not fact checked when she made the false claims, leading many to criticize ABC for being biased in their live “fact checking” process. 

Critics argue that ABC's David Muir and co-moderator Linsey Davis disproportionately fact-checked Trump while allowing Harris to evade scrutiny on multiple false claims, including her assertion about Charlottesville. 

According to The New York Post, ABC News has been facing backlash and significant rating drops following its moderation of the Trump-Harris debate, with Muir's “World News Tonight” losing nearly a million viewers—representing a 12% decline that highlights a growing public frustration with media bias. 

Cortes refers to the Charlottesville hoax as a “foundational lie” that framed Trump in a way that has been difficult for many passive media consumers to overcome. 

“Once you've established in somebody's mind that Trump is a bigot then almost nothing else he says matters,” Cortes said. “It's like once you've made him into this monster, this prejudicial monster, well then his policies don't matter. The effects of his presidency don't matter. That's why I say it's a foundational lie. It was so important for them to establish that myth, as being reality even though it's not reality. But since then, obviously, a million more and smaller smears. All of them untrue and all of them hurtful, but in my mind, not as consequential as that foundational lie.” 

Snopes has also debunked the hoax. 

Cortes, who served as a spokesman for Trump in 2016 and 2020, said that while some of Trump’s comments can be hard to walk back, the Charlottesville hoax was entirely fabricated by corporate media and never openly corrected to set the record straight.