"There’s this myth on the left that's not true," said Gingrich. "If you go back and look at what Trump said, Trump says clearly that he was opposed to white supremacists, that he's opposed to Klansmen, that he's opposed to nazis. He says it clearly."
"It’s not that clear," interjected co-hosts Joy Behar and Sunny Hostin.
"It’s not. I have what he said right here," Hostin continued. "His first statement he said that 'there was violence on many sides.' Two days later, after all the backlash, is the first time he mentioned the KKK and neo-Nazis. And then the following day he still said, Newt, 'you had some very bad people in that group, you also had some very fine people on both sides.'"
"If by 'both sides' -- look, this is an interesting topic," Gingrich replied shiftily.
"The statement is very interesting," Hostin shot back, sarcastically.
"Are we going to say if you are somebody who thought Robert E. Lee was a decent person, which by the way would be a high percentage of white Virginians --" Gingrich tried feebly, but got hit from both sides.
"Wasn’t he a traitor to the country," asked Behar.
"And a slave holder?" added Hostin. "And a horrible person?"
"Now you’re going to say everybody in the South who thinks that anybody was a reasonable person was, you know," Gingrich mumbled weakly, abruptly erasing Lee and history as a traitor and a slaveholder from the conversation.
"If you’re going to march with these folks, if you’re in the picture with them, it looks like you’re part of the problem," added Whoopi Goldberg. "Even if you say they were good people, you have to understand that’s not what people see."
"You figure if you’re a good person and you’re marching for the monument," she continued, "you’re not going to let people say, 'well, you know, we’re not going to let Jews take over our lives,' and 'no more Jews,' and 'no more blacks' and all of that stuff."
Gingrich tried to change the subject, saying that anti-fascist street protestors were just as bad as the neo-Nazis, but the panel wasn't having it.
"That’s not what we’re talking about, let’s stick with Charlottesville," Goldberg said. Gingrich then tried to hide Trump's racism behind the fact that his daughter Ivanka had converted to Judaism after marrying Jared Kushner. That also flopped.
"No one said that," said Hostin, her voice dripping with disdain. "What we said, Speaker Gingrich, is that he said 'you had some very bad people in that group. You also had some very fine people on both sides.' The suggestion somehow that he did not say that is intellectually dishonest."
"If you are marching with people wearing signs that say 'Down with Jews, Jews are not going to take over our lives,'" Goldberg said, speaking slowly as if to a dull-witted child, "and you don’t step away because that's not how you feel, you’re going to lumped into that group."
Watch the video below.
