Trump calls the violent Charlottesville gathering "peanut" in comparison to the demonstrations in Israel and Gaza.

On Wednesday night, former US President Donald Trump dismissed the 2017 Charlottesville, Virginia, white supremacist rally that resulted in a woman's murder as a "peanut" in comparison to the protests taking place around the country over Israel's conduct in Gaza. 

 Right-wing organizations, including neo-Nazis and White nationalists, flocked to Charlottesville in August 2017 to express their disapproval of the city's plan to remove a statue of Confederate Gen.

Robert E. Lee was chanting, "Jews will not replace us," among those gathering. A participant crashed his vehicle into a group of people, killing a 32-year-old paralegal and seriously hurting a number of others.  Pro-Palestinian protests have been happening around the nation, mostly on college campuses, but there have been no reports of any similar acts of violence. Concerns have been expressed about the safety of Jewish students and public figures have denounced antisemitic incidents that have taken place during the protests.

Trump's remarks were his most recent effort to downplay the events in Charlottesville. In 2017, he received a lot of backlash for saying that there were "really great people" on both sides of the protests. When Joe Biden declared his 2020 presidential candidacy against Trump, he brought up those remarks.  "Crooked Joe Biden would often claim that Charlottesville was the reason he ran for office.

 "Well, if that is the case, he is done a truly awful job because the riots and anti-Israel marches that are occurring across our country right now are far worse than Charlottesville," Trump said on Truth Social on Wednesday night.

In the same article, Trump accused Biden of harboring a deeper hatred for the Palestinian people than for Israel and the Jewish people.  "President Trump is 100% correct," said Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung .  

"The American people are not going to be lectured to by the guy who called white supremacists extremely good people after they yelled 'Jews will not replace us' and killed a woman," stated Ammar Moussa, a spokesman for the Biden team, in a statement.

On Monday, Biden denounced antisemitic actions that have taken place during demonstrations on college campuses and declared that his administration is battling bigotry against the Jewish people.  When asked about the events at Columbia University in New York, Biden responded, "I condemn the antisemitic protests, that is why I have set up a program to deal with them." "I also hold individuals who are ignorant of the situation of the Palestinians in contempt."

Major US universities have seen pro-Palestinian demonstrations; on Wednesday, the University of Texas in Austin saw scores of arrests, while the University of Southern California saw close to 100.

At Columbia University, the focus of the protests that started last week, demonstrators declared that they would not leave until the institution agreed to sever connections with Israeli universities and pledged to withdraw donations from organizations associated with Israel, among other demands.  On Wednesday, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson paid a visit to the school and demanded that Columbia University President Minouche Shafik step down if she was unable to restore calm. 

His calls came in the midst of the increasing turmoil on major college campuses, which resulted in many congressional hearings and, to some extent, the resignation of two Ivy League presidents: Liz Magill at the University of Pennsylvania and Claudine Gay at Harvard University.