This is Trump's Charlottesville connection
President Trump boasted Tuesday that he actually has a business connection to Charlottesville, Va., where violent protests erupted over the weekend, killing one woman and injuring multiple others.
“I own actually one of the largest wineries in the United States. It is in Charlottesville," Trump said after a press conference at Trump Tower in New York Tuesday.
“It’s a great place and it’s been pretty badly hurt over the last couple of days,” he added.
Trump bought the vineyard in 2011 and reopened it as Trump Winery in 2015, turning the business over to his son, Eric Trump, who now serves as the owner and president.
According to the winery’s website, the business is “not owned, managed or affiliated with Donald J. Trump, The Trump Organization or any of their affiliates.”
In an interview with FOX Business’ Cheryl Casone duing the winery’s grand opening in July of 2015, Eric Trump said that it is the “largest distributive winery on the East Coast in the United States. We do 55,000 cases of wine a year.”
Trump has been criticized this week for his initial remarks regarding white nationalists and neo-Nazi groups protesting the removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, saying both sides – the left and the right – are to blame. On Tuesday, he later backed up his statement again, saying, “You had a group on one side that was bad. You had a group on the other side that was also very violent. Nobody wants to say that. I’ll say it right now.”
Trump, however, did condemn neo-Nazis but added that “not all of those people were neo-Nazis, believe me. Not all of those people were white supremacists by any stretch.” Additionally, he criticized the “alt-left” group that he said was “very, very violent” when confronting the while nationalist and neo-Nazi groups that had gathered in Charlottesville.