Today’s quote comes to us from former President/current candidate Donald Trump.
Yesterday, speaking at an event held by the Black Conservative Federation (BCF), Mr. Trump said this:
“I got indicted for nothing, for something that is nothing. And a lot of people said that’s why the Black people like me, because they have been hurt so badly and discriminated against, and they actually viewed me as I’m being discriminated against. It’s been pretty amazing but possibly, maybe, there’s something there.”
So, what did Trump say? He said that Black people like him because, as people who have been hurt badly and discriminated against, they recognize that the same thing is happening to him.
Is this true? I consider it an obvious, major exaggeration (though directionally true to an extent, since his approval ratings among Blacks have risen significantly).
But is it racist for Trump to say Black people know discrimination when they see it so they empathize with me?
Personally, I don’t see it. But here, from Cheyanne M. Daniels’ article at thehill.com, is a sampling of reactions from exactly the organizations I would expect them to come from:
“The NAACP is outraged, but not surprised by yet another racist remark from the former President,” Derrick Johnson, NAACP president, told The Hill in a statement. “Donald Trump is delusional to think that his criminality would be an attractive quality to Black voters…”
Mondale Robinson, founder of the Black Male Voter Project, called Trump’s comments “absolutely racist” and said they will not play out well with Black men.
“The audacity of Donald Trump to speak to a room full of Black voters during Black History Month as if he isn’t the proud poster boy for modern racism,” Jasmine Harris, Black Media Director for the Biden-Harris re-election campaign, said in a statement.
“This might come as news to Trump, but pushing tired tropes, wannabe Jordans, and mugshot t-shirts isn’t going to win over Black voters who suffered through record high unemployment and skyrocketing uninsured rates under his leadership,” Sarafina Chitika, the DNC’s national press secretary, said in a statement.
“The audacity of Donald Trump to speak to a room full of Black voters during Black History Month as if he isn’t the proud poster boy for modern racism,” Jasmine Harris, Black Media Director for the Biden-Harris re-election campaign, said in a statement.
FYI: The month Trump took office, January 2017, Black unemployment was at 7.5%. Under Trump – until the pandemic blew everyone’s unemployment through the roof – it had dropped to 5.3%. Under Biden, as of the most current month, January, 2024, it is at 5.3% – exactly where Trump had gotten it down to.
I award Donald Trump Quote Of the Day “honors” for providing us yet another example of his serial exaggerating/bloviating – a trait that seems firmly embedded in his DNA and I doubt will ever go away.
And I award major dishonors to the people quoted above, because they attacked him as racist for saying something not racist all, and because they lied about his impact on Black unemployment in the bargain.
How I wish Donald Trump were not running for President. How I wish he would bow out – and, in doing so, that he would sternly instruct his supporters not to write him in, because that would split the Republican vote and insure four more years for the puppeteers controlling Joe Biden.
But this is Donald Trump – serial egomaniac. So that would never happen. If Trump can’t have the presidency, no other Republican can have it either.
Bottom line? Trump is a toxic disease on the Republican Party – whose toxicity may well insure Joe Biden’s puppeteers get four more years to destroy our country.
