Trump reminds us he’s a white supremacist with his latest comments about Black Americans

Trump is the GOP's Grand Wizard

Donald Trump is a white supremacist. There’s no dispute about this fact given his long and well-documented history of racism towards Blacks and other people of color.  That’s why Trump’s comments Friday night to a group of Black voters in South Carolina claiming that Blacks now like him because he has been charged with crimes is consistent with Trump’s white supremacist views.

Speaking at the Black Conservative Federation Honors Gala in Columbia, South Carolina on Friday night, Trump told the audience, “I got indicted a second time and then a third time and a fourth time!” That is when Trump added, “a lot of people said that that’s why the Black people like me.”  Trump continued on, further revealing how he views Black Americans by stating, “My mug shot — we’ve all seen the mug shot, and you know who embraced it more than anybody else? The Black population.”

Trump believes Blacks will like him more because he has committed crimes because crime is what he associates with the Black community. He doesn’t associate Blacks with excellence in academia, the business world or politics. In fact, Trump infamously waged his racist birther campaign versus President Obama in an effort to undermine the achievement of our nation’s first Black President. And Trump has continually smeared well-known Black people as having “low IQs” and being “dumb,” including claiming Obama who he smeared as a “terrible student.” Why? Simple, white supremacists like Trump subscribe to the racist myth that Blacks are inherently less intelligent than whites. 

And it’s Trump’s white supremacy that fuels his past comments about Blacks and crime. For example in his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump shared on social media false statistics that in 81% of the crimes where whites are killed, the assailant was Black. That number is wildly inaccurate as fact checkers noted but Trump’s point was to tell white America that he would protect from dangerous Black people.  It’s also why during that same campaign he shared on Twitter comments from open white supremacists including one with the Twitter handle, “white genocide.”

None of this is new for Trump who in 1989 took out a full page ad in the NY Times calling for the death penalty for the “Central Park Five” –five Black and Latino teens--even before they were tried. And as President--after the five were exonerated by way of DNA evidence—Trump refused to admit they were innocent.

However, when it comes to white MAGA terrorists who attacked our Capitol on Jan 6 as part of Trump’s plot to remain in office after losing the 2020 election, he has repeatedly said they are “hostages” wrongly prosecuted who he will gleefully pardon if elected. To Trump, white conservatives are always innocent but people of color charged with crimes are assumed to be guilty.

In his speech Friday, Trump also claimed that Black people love him now because “they have been hurt so badly and discriminated against, and they actually viewed me as I’m being discriminated against.”

In reality, it’s Trump who has discriminated against Blacks and other people of color. Infamously, Trump’s real estate company was sued by the federal government in the 1970s for discriminating against black renters in violation of the Fair Housing Act. In response to the lawsuit, Trump held a press conference attacking the Justice Department for trying to force his company “to rent to welfare recipients.” Trump reportedly added, if such people were allowed in his buildings, it would cause a “massive fleeing from the city of not only our tenants, but communities as a whole.”

In 2018, Trump reportedly asked in reference to Haiti and African countries, “Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?” He then suggested that the US should take more people from countries like Norway. His point was obvious: He wants white immigrants but an end to immigration from Africa and Haiti.

And during his 2016 campaign, Trump declared that “Islam hates us” as he called “for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” That is what discrimination looks like, not Trump being prosecuted for his crimes.  

However, Trump’s claim he’s being discriminated against is consistent with the MAGA view that whites are now the biggest victims of discrimination. For example, a 2023 poll found that 73% of Trump voters say that racism against white Americans is a problem. That poll also found that just 19% of Trump voters describe racism against Black Americans as a “big problem.”  In contrast, twice as many (37%) say racism against white Americans is a “big problem.”

White victimhood is huge on the right. That helps explain Trump and MAGA’s hostility to Black Lives Matter, which Trump as President called a “symbol of hate.” And it’s why Trump shared on social media during the protests in response to George Floyd’s brutal murder, posts by his supporters that smeared Floyd as a career criminal and demanded he not be seen as a “martyr.”

In 2020, exit polls found that 87% of Blacks voted for Biden while only 12% voted for Trump. Only in Trump’s mind will more Blacks vote for him because he has been charged with crimes. But that’s how white supremacists think.

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